#hugh fitzgerald

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Iran Building Precision-Guided Missiles for Hezbollah

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The world is so suffused with celebrations of Christmas that it is hard to keep non-Christians from wanting to take part. In predominantly Hindu India, in Buddhist and Shinto Japan, and in Communist China, Christmas trees and Santa Clauses are found in major cities; these are no longer limited to the small Christian populations, but have been adopted by many others as well. Presents are exchanged by many non-Christians on Christmas Day. These are part of a worldwide celebration of Christmas, devoid of its religious element, and open to all. Muslims are the only ones who are sternly disciplined by their own leaders and clerics for such infractions. But despite running a risk of punishment, Muslims are not immune to the attractions of these secularized observances of Christmas; their interest in the holiday appears in recent years only to have increased. It is this which alarms the grinches of Hamas. In several of the Gulf Arab states, especially the U.A.E., there are Santa Clauses in stores holding court for entranced children; there are window displays of Christmas trees gaily bedecked with ornaments; trees, too, are also to be found for sale. All of this would have been unthinkable just a few years ago; now these items – Santa Claus dolls, Christmas trees and ornaments, Christmas cards — all of which were unobtainable just a few years ago,, can now be found in both the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia. This is exactly what Hamas fears may be happening: Christmas slowly suffusing the brains of Muslims, as its non-religious seductions – the cards and carols, the present-giving, the smiling Santas for the children lisping their wish list to him in stores, the sights and smells of a distant northern clime brought into Middle Eastern homes by a well-trimmed Christmas tree—can lead trusting Muslims astray, possibly even causing some of them to look into the religion of those whose holiday, Christmas, in its secular celebration has captivated many Muslims. What could be more terrible than that? Hence the understandable horror of Hamas apparatchiks in Gaza, determined to stamp out any Muslim fraternizing with the Christian enemy when guards are down during Christmas-time, and preventing Muslim participation, no matter how minor, in any of the secular observances associated with Christmas, including such aspects of the holiday as Santa Claus, workshop elves at the North Pole, Christmas trees, and the exchange of gifts. Who knows what that could lead to? Baptisms? Rosaries? The Eucharist? It’s a slippery slope.

Hugh Fitzgerald, In Gaza, Hamas Is The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

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Palestinians Accuse Hamas of Storing Weapons in Civilian Areas

The “warehouse” was, in fact, an ordinary three-story residential house in the Al-Zawiya market area in the middle of Gaza City. Scores of civilians would have been in and around the house at all times.

Fadel Al-Manasfeh, a Palestinian writer, echoes the Israelis: “Hamas chooses popular markets as a safe place for its ammunition warehouses because it knows that Israel does not target such places.” The Israelis try to pinpoint their attacks on these warehouses so as to minimize civilian casualties, and before launching them the IDF makes sure to warn civilians to leave the immediate area, through telephone calls, emails, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. Not all the civilians always leave in time, and sometimes the hoped-for precision of the bombing is not achieved. But Israel never deliberately “targets” civilian areas. Al-Manasfeh has it right: “Israel does not target such places” as those “popular markets” within or near to which Hamas stores its ammunition and weapons.

The next time the Jewish state is attacked in the UN Genera Assembly for causing “civilian deaths,” Israel’s ambassador should read out the Jerusalem Post article posted above, taking care to point out that the Palestinians themselves have accused Hamas of deliberately storing their weapons in civilian areas, in the hope that either Israel will be forced to refrain from attacking or, if it does decide to attack, any civilian casualties that result – Hamas doesn’t give a damn about what happens to them – will make Israel look bad. Let the Ambassador read out to the General Assembly what the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights has to say about this latest explosion at a house in the midst of the Al-Zawiya market area, and why the 133 Palestinian NGOs have called for a thorough investigation, and what the Palestinian writer Fadel Al-Manasfeh said about the terror group Hamas’ practice of deliberately placing weapons in civilian areas (like markets), because it knows that Israel would be unlikely to target them. Having read all that out – quoting only Palestinians themselves – he can then tell the stunned Assembly (and the furious delegate from the “State of Palestine”) that “I rest my case.

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As is well known, the Palestinian Authority rewards terrorists, if alive, and their families, if they are dead, by paying stipends to them for whatever murderous acts against Israelis those terrorists have manage to carry out. This “Pay-For-Slay” policy has outraged Israel, which in 2019 started to deduct the amounts the P.A. allocates to this program from the tax revenues collected on its behalf by Israel. For a few months, the PA rejected any of those tax revenues from which the “Pay-For-Slay” amounts were deducted, but it finally relented and again chose to accept the taxes collected by Israel, minus the amounts that Israel calculates the PA continues to spend on the Pay-For-Slay Program.

The Pay-For-Slay Program thus remained in place. But the Israelis then went through the courts, where a recent victory may make it impossible for the Pay-For-Slay program to continue.

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Could those misperceptions have something to do with the morality police in Iran beating women for wearing an “insufficient” head covering? Or did the news about the arrest of a Saudi woman who merely tweeted a picture of herself at home without a hijab make an impression?

What fun to try on the hijab! And there are so many colors to choose from! Why would any woman object to that?

“There’s no oppression on both as the Koran tells us there’s no compulsion in religion,” she said. “So, we do choose to even wear the head scarf. There’s women that do not wear the head scarf and that’s an individual process.”

What a strange sentence at the end — “There’s women that do not wear the head scarf and that’s an individual process.” Not “individual choice,” but rather, “individual process,” and that might imply that someone is going through a “process” of coming to understand the rightness of hijab, after having first rejected it.

Yes, according to 2:256, the favorite Qur’anic verse of the propagandists, “there is no compulsion in religion.” But we know that, taken literally, it isn’t true. Muslims who apostatize can be killed, as Muhammad says in the Hadith (Sahih Bukhari 9.57): “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.” Surely that constitutes “compulsion in religion” for disaffected Muslims.

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Fear of Muslims Leads to Prison Conversions to Islam

There is no way to prevent Muslims from intimidating non-Muslim prisoners within the  present system. Prisons lack sufficient personnel to monitor every threatening encounter of Muslims with non-Muslims. Non-Muslim prisoners are threatened in two ways. First, they are directly threatened with violence from Muslim gangs if they do not convert. Second, Muslims threaten to circulate false stories about them — as, for example, that they are “snitches” who deserve to be attacked — to put them in danger of violent retribution from other prisoners, including non-Muslims. The fear is palpable; few non-Muslims can resist these threats; the prisons have thus become a main source of converts to Islam.

There is only one way to prevent these forced conversions. That is to make sure that Muslims are confined to Muslim-only prisons. Some Muslim groups will undoubtedly protest that this is unacceptable segregation, an expression of “islamophobia” and “racism,” that it was unfair to single out Muslim prisoners, and that in any case, prisoners should not be denied the opportunity to learn about Islam, which has “nothing to do with violence, as Pope Francis has said,” and which can provide a structure, and bring stability, to their lives.

The objections of these groups should be ignored. The facts about prison conversions cannot be disputed. Muslims in prisons are using whatever weapons they can — the threat of spreading false stories, the threat of violence, the actual infliction of violence — to force non-Muslims to convert. This is not the peaceful “opportunity to learn about Islam” that Muslim apologists describe. The prison personnel are unable to stop the threats from these Muslim gangs. The converts to Islam in prisons pose a special danger, as they are already prone to violence and antisocial behavior. Islam provides them with a religious justification for such behavior, and when they are released, they can renew violence against Unbelievers, this time enjoying the favor of the faith.

As for Muslims claiming that freedom of religion includes the freedom to proselytize, that does not apply when the proselytizing consists not of theological argument but of the threat, and infliction, of violence. It’s a travesty to describe prison conversions to Islam as voluntary acts; non-Muslims in prison have become terrified of the biggest, baddest gang — the Muslims — whom they must join to ensue their own safety.

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This “affaire de la jupe” may seem small, but in France it has loomed large, for it is one of those seemingly trivial events, whereby Muslims, little by little, attempt to impose their own rules on the larger society.

But what happened then was even more disturbing than the original incident of the bearded driver of a city bus enforcing an Islamic dress code. Facebook took down Kamel Bensheikh’s account on his Facebook page because, it said, his post tended to “incite hatred.” Thus does the world’s main social media platform decide to censor a perfectly reasonable expression of outrage by a father at the treatment of his daughter. She had, after all, been refused service at 11 o’clock at night, and left with another woman to fend for themselves in a dangerous area of Paris (Buttes-Chaumont). There was nothing in Bencheikh’s posting that “incited hatred”’; he was angry with the driver, and expressed that anger. But anger is not hate; he nowhere “incited hatred” as Facebook, in removing his account, falsely claimed. He asked himself: why does the social network accuse him of inciting hatred with this post?

Indeed, as soon as the facts of the incident were revealed, the French political class reacted on Twitter, asking RATP (the public transportation company) to provide the necessary sanctions against the driver.. Here are just a few of their responses. Valérie Pécresse: “If the facts are proven they are scandalous.”Jean Messiha:”The woman’s father posts her story on Facebook, which immediately deletes it. Are we still in France? “And Lydia Guirous, spokesperson for the Republicans, was even more radical: “There is an EMERGENCY need to eradicate political Islam in France.” Valérie Boyer affirms that “religious extremism has no place in our Republic. Our freedoms, our rights must be preserved!”

“This guy who drives a bus paid for by my taxes prevented my daughter, who holds a valid Navigo pass and therefore in good standing, who has never had anything to blame for getting on… Just because she wore a skirt,” her father the poet said.. He described the driver as a “Maghrebin” and “Islamist.” . And he demanded a public apology from RATP, which, for its part, said that the driver does not acknowledge “the facts as presented in the press.” However, the Régie (the administration of the bus service) has, however, opened “disciplinary proceedings” against him for “lack of service”. Francilians [people of the Ile-de-France region] can see, every day, that they are very often driven by bearded people,… How many drivers refuse to drive a bus [for some religious reason]? And with the arrival of Ramadan, some people are openly asking themselves the question of passenger safety, because can a driver who does not drink, does not eat all day long, be sure of all his means? Can’t he lose his attention, even for a second?” (French original here: x)

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Rahaf Mohammed, Linda Sarsour, and the Question of Apostasy

Many who knew nothing about how severely those who leave the faith can be punished will have learned, through Rahaf’s own story, of the threats of death she reasonably feared and, one hopes, of the hadith which supports that punishment, in which Muhammad gives his terrifying command to “kill [anyone] who changes his Islamic religion.”

Meanwhile, let’s ask Linda Sarsour, our Muslim Feminist Misogynist, if she is delighted that Rahaf’s story has a happy outcome and if she thinks we should all celebrate her bravery. Or does she think that girl should have returned dutifully to her family in Saudi Arabia, a country which Linda Sarsour has for so long defended? Complicating matters for Sarsour, the Saudis, apparently ungrateful for her efforts on their behalf, began in December to assail her for having her roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. What’s poor Linda Sarsour to do — keep defending the Saudis, or deepen the rift not of her making?

And let’s all keep Linda Sarsour in our sights, by asking her, on every conceivable occasion and on every conceivable platform: Do you agree, Linda, that those who leave Islam should be killed? Or punished in any way? Yes or no? How many ways can even Linda Sarsour possibly squirm out of answering that?