"Some Migrants in Germany Want to Go Home"

Via Tweet: "Sex, drugs and rock & roll may save us from Islam."

WSJ: “I came to Germany because everyone was saying it was heaven. Now I regret that decision,” said the 30-year-old from Damascus. Last year, 1.1 million migrants—mainly Arabs, Afghans and Africans—came to Germany to escape war and hardship, many of them risking their lives to make the dangerous journey.... 

[M]any who arrive find the country doesn’t match their often inflated expectations. They balk at modest benefits, poor job prospects, and harsh treatment at immigration offices, and voice other complaints ranging from bland food to Germans’ open attitudes about sex....

Abdullah Alsoaan, a 51-year-old dentist from Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria, said he came to Germany 10 months ago with the help of the United Nations to receive treatment for complications of diabetes. Now he is waiting for a new passport to return to the 10 children he left behind in Syria. The reason: After seeing teenagers kissing in public, he said he couldn’t raise his daughters here. “The problem isn’t with the Germans or Germany, people are very nice,” said Mr. Alsoaan. “But they have their way of living their lives and we have ours.”

Others have reached similar conclusions. When Amer found his 5-year-old son stumbling upon an erotic program on television recently, he saw it as confirmation that he would never be able to adapt to a new life here. (read the whole thing)

Religion Neutral Bathroom

"Storm of controversy over sign banning Muslim staff from washing their feet in city office public toilet before their daily prayers"

An anonymous building worker has sparked outrage by placing a sign on the men's toilet of a Sydney city office block in an attempt to ban Muslims from washing their feet in the sink before their daily prayers.

The sign, which has a cartoon of a man with one of his feet in a sink and surrounded by a circle with a slash through it, was placed on the door of the men's toilet of an office block on Pitt Street, in Sydney's business district.

The sign is believed to have gone up on Wednesday, just days after a building worker queried one of the shop workers who use the toilet.

The 26-year-old Pakistan native, who is studying in Australia to fulfill his late mother's dream, said earlier this week he went as usual to the first floor men's room to do his pre-prayer ablutions prior to Dhuhr, the prayer just before midday which currently falls at 11.52am.

He said that, as was the custom, he washed his hands, his mouth, his head and his neck, as well as his arms, and then placed his feet one at a time into one of the men's rooms' two sinks.

Via last night's trending Twitter hashtag #FactsAreNotRacist

How close is too close?

Indonesian woman is caned for being 'too close' to a man she wasn't married to https://t.co/xYn4opXo72 pic.twitter.com/VkKXWuwUG7

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) December 29, 2015

A conundrum

pic.twitter.com/eqDkhpbGtF

— MARYANN (@downbyseashore) December 16, 2015

"The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic."

"Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”..."

Every academic I asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent me to Haykel. Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States, and when he talks through his Mephistophelian goatee, there is a hint of an unplaceable foreign accent.

According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”...

It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State “a problem with Islam.” The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. And yet simply denouncing the Islamic State as un-Islamic can be counterproductive, especially if those who hear the message have read the holy texts and seen the endorsement of many of the caliphate’s practices written plainly within them. (read the whole thing)

Giuliani: Netanyahu Is A Man Who Fights for His People

Watch what has caused a big online stir and judge for yourself.


Part 1 Link in case the video does not play correctly


Part 2 Link in case the video does not play correctly

"Copenhagen shooting during debate on Islam"

"Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt told reporters in Copenhagen: "We feel certain now that it's a politically motivated attack, and thereby it is a terrorist attack...  We take this situation extremely seriously. We are in a high alarm all over the country, and our main priority at this stage is to catch the perpetrators and make sure that we find them as soon as possible."


Copenhagen gunman

Update: More shootings erupt in Copenhagen...

BREAKING NEWS: Nørreport Station in Copenhagen being evacuated as new shooting erupts in city
— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) February 15, 2015

Islamic Cleric Issues Fatwa Against Female Selfies

Islamic Cleric Issues Fatwa Against Female Selfies http://t.co/KAUVC40p2n pic.twitter.com/dUHz9nHAhb
— I Yam What I Yam (@Nvr4Get91101) January 29, 2015

"Saudi cleric issues fatwa on snowmen"

"Asked on a religious website if it was permissible for fathers to build snowmen for their children after a snowstorm in the country’s north, Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid replied: “It is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun.”"

“God has given people space to make whatever they want which does not have a soul, including trees, ships, fruits, buildings and so on,” he wrote in his ruling.

That provoked swift responses from Twitter users writing in Arabic and identifying themselves with Arab names. 

Lego Snowman

“They are afraid for their faith of everything ... sick minds,” one Twitter user wrote.

Another posted a photo of a man in formal Arab garb holding the arm of a “snow bride” wearing a bra and lipstick. “The reason for the ban is fear of sedition,” he wrote.

"Germans take to the streets to protest against 'Islamisation'"

A new type of anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing “Islamisation” of the country.

The new protests, which began in the city of Dresden in the former East Germany, feature no neo-Nazi slogans and have nothing to do with the traditional far right.

Instead the demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, “Wir sind das Volk”, or “We are the people”. They say they want to preserve Germany’s Judeo-Christian Western culture.

Thousands joined the latest anti-Islam march held in Germany

"Sharia law or gay marriage critics would be branded ‘extremists’ under Tory plans"

“Anyone who expresses an opinion that isn’t regarded as totally compliant with the Equality Act could find themselves ranked alongside Anjem Choudary, Islamic state or Boko Haram,” he (Simon Calvert, Deputy Director of the Christian Institute) said.

He added: “How many times a day do intellectually lazy political activists accuse their opponents of ‘spreading hatred’?

“The left does it, the right does it, liberals do it, conservatives do it, it is routine.

“Hand a judge a file of a thousand Twitter postings accusing this atheist or that evangelical of ‘spreading hatred’ and they could easily rule that an EDO (Extremism Disruption Order) is needed.

“It’s a crazy idea – the Conservatives need to drop this like a hot brick.”

Why would anybody want to hold a hot brick without a proper glove?


Never mind... smart-alecky internet.

"Maher and Ben Affleck Battle over Radical Islam"

"Ben Affleck, Bill Maher, Nicholas Kristol, Michael Steele, and author Sam Harris got into what could only be described as a tumultuous continuation of Maher’s comments on Islam from last week, with Maher and Affleck tearing into each other over the influence of fundamentalists in the Muslim community."

“We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where criticism of the religion gets conflated with bigotry towards muslims as people,” Harris began. “It’s intellectually ridiculous.”

“Hold on — are you the person who officially understands the codified doctrine of Islam?” Affleck, on the show to promote his movie Gone Girl, interrupted, and argued that criticizing Islam, as Maher and Harris were doing it, was “gross and racist. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’” 

You get the picture...


"Islam is the mother load of bad ideas"

Germans look to Islam in hopes of saving themselves.

"For the first time, German public schools are offering classes in Islam to primary school students using state-trained teachers and specially written textbooks, as officials try to better integrate the nation’s large Muslim minority and counter the growing influence of radical religious thinking."

For German authorities, countering the expansion of more radical religious thinking has presented a vexing problem. For now, the domestic intelligence service keeps close watch on a growing number, with 4,500 Salafists under observation in 2011 and 5,500 in 2012, according to an annual government report.

Increasingly, attention has turned to education and ways to nurture greater inclusion for Germany’s approximately four million Muslims, a number that has steadily increased since German industry recruited the first Turks as “guest workers” in the 1960s.

One answer, officials in Hesse hope, is being put in effect in classes where young children are guided by a state-trained teacher working from a state-approved curriculum.

In one class, Timur Kumlu recently asked his 19 6-year-old students each to take a strand from a large wool ball. He then instructed the children — whose parents hailed from Muslim countries as varied as Afghanistan, Albania, Morocco and Turkey — to examine how, like the threads, they, too, were woven together.

It was a simple lesson containing a gentle message filled with symbolism — that they were linked by their Islamic faith and practices of prayer.

“We are now all bound together — you come from different countries, and so do your parents,” said Mr. Kumlu, who reminded the children that while their parents came from Afghanistan or Albania, they were born in Germany. 

“I think it’s clear now that for years we made the mistake of alienating people,” said Nicola Beer, who as education minister in Hesse was one of several politicians, professors and teachers who pushed for the Islamic instruction. Now, she said, Germans recognize that “we are here together, we work together, and we educate our children together.”

It will be interesting to see how this experiment works out. Does prayer in schools lead to children growing up terrorist? Our own US constitution precludes that kind of experimentation here in the US. So, we just get to watch, from afar, hopefully in safety.

NYT

Angola bans Islam, dismantles mosques.

Internationalbusinesstimes.

"The process of legalization of Islam has not been approved by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, their mosques would be closed until further notice."

Angola President José Eduardo dos Santos has weighed in on the controversy, as he was quoted in Nigeria's Osun Defender newspaper on Sunday as saying, "This is the final end of Islamic influence in our country," according to the OnIslam.net report.

Bento Francisco maintains "that radical Muslims were not welcome in Angola and that the government was not ready to legalize the presence of mosques in the country,"

Comments at all of these online things are useless; ibtimes, French-language Moroccan La Nouvelle Tribune, onislam indiatoday, reddit, jihadwatch, guardianlv, joeforamerica, shoebat, jewsnews, bigbluewaves, nothing at all unique, or perceptive or not perfectly prosaic and expected. All the reports use the same photos.

Angola is on the Western side at the bottom of the green belt that goes across Africa.

The photos are depressing. All over the country it appears the place airplanes fall dead from the sky, and there is nothing pick them apart, were locomotives simply cease moving on their tracks and rust, where industry keeps being stillborn over and over, where rusted out army tanks are common as garden gnomes sinking into the ground. There are photos of small churches but none I saw of mosques. More more photos of army tanks melting to dirt than hotels. More attempts at industry than actual industry. Apparent farms and orchards with leaned over blown apart trees that used to be active. All small dilapidated buildings, everything photographed appears to be deteriorating. 

I saw one flag.