Thursday, May 17, 2012
Ninety-three percent of French Muslims voted for the Socialist Francois Hollande in the second round of the French presidential election, giving him the margin of victory over Nicolas Sarkozy. That, according to the French website la Vie.
The final tally had Hollande winning by only 1.13 million votes. An estimated 2 million Muslims voted. So, do the math and Hollande wins, thanks to immigrants from Islamic countries.
This is a milestone for Muslim political power in Europe.
Photos from the French website Observatory of Islamization show the Muslim and immigrant celebrations, as they displayed flags from their native countries.
I’ve been observing the strange coalition of the Left and fundamentalist Muslims firsthand since 9/11, often in London’s Trafalgar Square where they would join in common cause against the Iraq War and “Islamophobia.”
I wondered if it ever dawned on the pink mohawk-wearing, pot-smoking British leftists that if their Islamist allies came to power, their “fun” and maybe their lives would come to an abrupt end.
I liken the Left’s willingness to support Islamists to their willingness to rack up astronomical government debt. They won’t be around when their mad policy finally brings disaster to the nation. In the meantime, European Leftists use Muslims as a reliable voting constituency, especially on a local level, where Socialist mayors trade new mosques for votes.
During his campaign, Hollande vowed to change French electoral laws so that Muslim residents without French citizenship would be allowed to vote in municipal elections by 2014. That electoral math will undoubtedly be even scarier.
Monday, May 07, 2012
Why did Nicholas Sarkozy lose the French presidency? Lots of reasons, but the London Telegraph’s Anne-Elisabeth Moutet points to two things: public dislike for Sarko's personal style, and being “Palin-ized” in the media as a "friend of the rich."
These two factors would help doom his re-election bid. I conducted this interview in Paris during the campaign.
Monday, April 16, 2012
In Paris, I interviewed philosopher and writer Pascal Bruckner, author of the new book, Le Fantisme de l'Apocalypse (The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse).
Bruckner, who supports protecting the environment, calls the belief in a catastropic climate change scenario a "pagan religion," in which "Mother Earth is suffering," man "has sinned and must be punished," and the punishment will be an environmental apocalypse.
I also used some of Bruckner's comments in my piece on climate change as an article of faith in Europe.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Here is part of my interview in Brussels with Sam Van Rooy, who co-edited Islam: Critical Essays on a Political Religion.
The Dutch language book consists of 34 essays by writers such as Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye'or.
Sam explains why Islam is closer in structure to Communism and Nazism than to Christianity or Judaism. And he is very pessimistic about the future of Europe.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Here is a second portion of my interview in Antwerp with Abu Imran, leader of Sharia4Belgium. He describes the world under Sharia as something like heaven on Earth; without crime, hunger, or injustice.
In the first installment, Imran said Islam is the opposite of democracy and that Islam and Sharia law are inseparable. Sharia is a total system of law and government from the Koran and Islamic scholars.
It is most famous for some of its punishments: amputation for stoning, and death for adultery, homosexuality or leaving Islam.
My TV story with Abu Imran will air March 15 on "The 700 Club."
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Here is an excerpt from my interview in Antwerp with the head of Sharia4Belgium, Abu Imran.
He says the label “democratic Muslim” is a contradiction in terms; that Sharia (he means the full Sharia—amputation for theft, stoning for adultery) is inseparable from true Islam; and he is very confident that the whole world will be brought under the control of Islam.
Check back for more excerpts from my interview with Abu Imran, and the full story on March 15 on "The 700 Club" and CBNNews.com.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Over the past few weeks we have learned that Norwegian police officers and judges may be allowed to wear Muslim headscarves while acting in their official capacities, and that a Muslim woman is touring schools instructing students on the wonders of wearing the veil.
Bruce Bawr writes that 20-something Aisha Shezadi Kausar has been lecturing students on the veil as a “feminist choice.” She claims the veil is part of her “struggle for freedom” (George Orwell is spinning) and that the only reasons for opposing veils are “prejudice” and “fear of foreigners.”
And the kicker, according to Bawr, is that the brainwashing sessions are sponsored not by some radical Muslim organization but by leftist literary groups.
Perhaps Ms. Kausar should also teach the girls that the headscarf or veil may save them from being raped. Norway has a rape epidemic, with police statistics showing it is mostly Muslim men raping white native Norwegian girls. Muslim men have said in Norwegian news reports that women who don’t wear a headscarf or veil are whores.
It is truly bizarre that leftists and feminists champion a religion, Islam, in which women have the legal status of minors,which reserves the right to beat or kill women with impugnity, and views non-Muslim women as whores. But it’s nothing new; we have seen this strange coalition since before 9/11. I have stood in anti-Iraq War demos in Trafalgar square with a Wahhabi on one side and pot-smoking leftist radical on other. Both hate Western civilization.
Although it’s an annoying organization with its detractors within France, it would be instructive for the Norwegian students to know that there is actually an ex-Muslim women’s group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives, because Muslim women who wear the headscarf or veil are submissive, and are not free, in the eyes of Islamic law. Those who do not wear them are whores.
Norway is probably the most acute case of radical Islamization in Western Europe. With a relatively tiny population of under 5-million, Norway’s leftist government has embraced Hamas and scorned Israel, and thrown wide the gates to the radical Muslim agenda.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Where is the next Ronald Reagan when you need them? Never has the voter appetite been greater for a president who will truly change the disastrous course this country is on and return it to its original charter: a “beacon on a hill,” a source of light in the world by example and not by intervention; a haven of freedom with a very limited government that lives in fear of both the people and the constitution, and one that gets the heck out of the way of wealth creation and human ingenuity.
This is what we have in 2012: The Democrat in the White House, endorsed by a leading communist, continues his program to turn America into a bankrupt European welfare state.
And what of the Republican field? Pick your metaphor: Re-treads, scrap heap, bone pile; a collection of various career politicians, some of whom seem to have been running for 20 years, and most of whom have been hypocrites on government spending at one time or another.
When it comes to the Welfare State, almost all Republican lawmakers have been hypocrites, picking and choosing their favorite pork. If the economy were to turn up and the deficit shrank a little, I think most of this field would return to their limited modified pork barreling ways.
Each candidate has some core of true believers, but many GOP voters have one hand holding their noses while their other hand pulls the voting lever. With the current field, a truly spot-on conservative platform has yet to meet an electable candidate: the dream candidate, this generation’s Ronald Reagan.
In discussions with European conservatives (they’re called liberals over there—which is the correct usage of the word), I’m often asked why there are so few dynamic, electable, truly limited government conservatives running for Ppesident of the United States. Many were astonished that John McCain was the best the GOP could do in 2008.
I told them my opinion, which is that leftists who believe in big government naturally flock to Washington. The best and brightest progressives are enthusiastic about more laws, taxes, and regulations. But our best conservative leaders are off creating wealth, running companies or, as I put it, "coaching football teams."
America desperately needs another Reagan, a leader from outside the beltway, who hasn’t had his mind turned to jello by the sickening miasma that our national political culture has become, and who grasps the real God-ordained mission of this nation.
Monday, December 26, 2011
My hunch is that if Iraq does not completely collapse into sectarian violence and anarchy within half a year, it will peacefully slip into the control of Iran. And a very real issue in next year’s presidential election is likely to be “Who lost Iraq?”
America spilled precious blood and treasure to eliminate Saddam Hussein. But we traded a perceived threat for what few at the time realized would be a costly nation-building nightmare. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell famously warned about Iraq that if “we break it, we own it.”
In the heady early days of the Iraq War, it sounded like annoying carping, but it was exactly right. And we broke Iraq well. It’s still broken.
George W. Bush’s Wilsonian impulse to spread democracy and “nation-build” sprang from a belief expressed by Bush several times that all people want to live in freedom. And that is certainly not true.
Thirty-nine people died in Christmas day bombings in Nigeria because an Islamic terrorist group called Boko Haram demanded that “democracy and the constitution…be suspended."
Every people group does not want democracy. Some simply want more food or for someone else to die. Some are devoting their lives to the implementation of Islamic Sharia law, which brings backwardness, slavery, and barbarity.
In Iraq, the terrorist bombs started going off as soon as the last American troops were out of the country. The attacks last Thursday on majority Shiite areas are suspected by some as part of an Iranian-backed plot to re-ignite civil war against minority Sunnis.
Iraq’s Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, has been forced to hide in Kurdistan after being accused of murder and terrorism by the Iraq’s Shia-dominated government. Al-Hashimi speaks convincingly about how Iran has already successfully infiltrated the government and the Iraqi military, and is behind the false charges against him. A delegation of Iraqi generals went to Iran last month to explore greater military cooperation between the two countries.
Some argue that Turkey and Saudi Arabia will never allow Iraq to fall under Iranian influence, but that may be hard for them to prevent, when Iraq and Iran share such strong religious ties and a long border.
And if Iraq collapses or becomes a defacto satellite of Iran, a very toxic public debate will commence in this country over whether all those young American men and woman died in vain for a failed nation-building project half a world away, and who is responsible for “losing Iraq.”
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
It would be instructive for everyone, especially Europeans, to look again at old photos of soldiers merrily marching off to World War I. Their smiles and confidence reflected the prevailing view that they should expect a short, glorious war. But very few of those smiling men would return in one piece, if they returned at all.
For Europeans in 1914, it was simply impossible to imagine the enormous scope of the death and upheaval that was coming. Fifteen million would die. The borders would be re-drawn. All the major empires, from London to Istanbul, would fall or be mortally wounded. And the resulting political trauma would usher in Nazism and Marxism-Leninism, and then an even bloodier second world war.
No, Europe is not facing anything like the destruction that awaited it in 1914. But the continent also does not seem to fully grasp what is coming down the road, or what to do about it. Each new bailout announcement from Brussels is greeted in the media as final salvation, after last month’s announcement of final salvation didn’t cut it (because the bailout wasn’t big enough).
If there is one thing you can take to the bank, it’s that bailouts cannot save the euro. It should be self-evident from the way the bailouts have ballooned from from 100 billion, to 440 billion, to 780 billion to 2 trillion Euros. There is no realistic amount of money, and no easily implementable plan that can save the euro in its present form. And each new, bigger rescue plan is simply doubling down on a bad bet, contributing to a final collapse that will be even more spectacular than before.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told the French news magazine L’Express that Europe is facing an existential crisis that could lead to revolution and war. Today former German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck, warned that a collapse of the eurozone could reignite nationalism in Europe: "If the eurozone were to collapse, it could quickly lead to a political renationalization in Europe."
But these are like generals fighting the last war. The threat to Europe is not rising nationalism when the euro fails, but political collapse and extreme social chaos from economic devastation.
It was reported today that bank runs have begun in Greece. That’s what happens when monetary systems collapse. The rich flee, store shelves and bank vaults empty, and those unfortunate “have-nots” who are left are very, very unhappy. And what comes after that could indeed look like a replay of a very unpleasant period of European history.