Islamist Watch (IW) maintains an extensive archive of news items on nonviolent Islamism in the Western world. The complete collection can be found here; lists organized by topic are accessible on the right side of the IW homepage.
The following are some of the recent developments covered in the IW database:
Muslim teens laud Hitler and the Holocaust on Dutch TV
“I am satisfied with what Hitler did with the Jews,” a teenager from the Dutch city of Arnhem states in a disturbing video that aired last month on the Nederland 2 channel. “As far as I am concerned, Hitler should have killed all Jews.” The boy is one of several Jew-hating Muslim youths of Turkish descent shown conversing with Mehmet Sahin, a doctoral student who works to challenge “pathetic” attitudes of the type exhibited. The response to the broadcast underscores the hurdles that he faces. First, Dutch media ignored the story until the Simon Wiesenthal Center forced the issue weeks later. Second, Sahin has gone into hiding after receiving death threats.
Anti-Semitism expert Manfred Gerstenfeld warns that the video represents merely “the tip of the iceberg.” Having interviewed 117 young European Muslims, researcher Günther Jikeli concluded that “the majority voiced some or strong anti-Semitic feelings.” The consequence is that Jews increasingly suffer violent attacks in Europe while officials do little to combat a problem that their policies created. Governments “allowed immigrants into their countries in a non-selective way without taking into account the cultural differences,” Gerstenfeld explains. “Actively promoting anti-Semitism was part and parcel of the cultures these people came from.” It is, he contends, “the most troubling development for European Jewry in the past 50 years.”
Left: Youth volunteer Mehmet Sahin wagered €50 that he will convince these teens to stop hating Jews. Hope springs eternal. Right: Leaving court, Wassim Fayad described why he had repeatedly lashed his alcohol-consuming friend: “I love him for the sake of Allah.” |
Muslims found guilty of scourging intoxicated Aussie
Four men have been convicted of carrying out a July 2011 flogging in a Sydney suburb. Muslim convert Christian Martinez had called his mentor Wassim Fayad (multiple spellings given by media) for help after a night of booze and drugs. Fayad arrived and whipped Martinez 40 times with a cord as the others pinned him down. “I’m only doing this because I love you,” said Fayad, insisting that memories of the pain would ward off temptations. Martinez had agreed to some of the lashes, but the magistrate put “moral standards” above questions of consent. He also noted that “assaults occasioned in the course of a religious practice involving mortification of the flesh have not been before any court in any common law country” prior to this. Behold the new West.
The case underlines the growing menace of vigilantes who enforce Shari’a in Western nations, frequently breaking secular laws in the process. The phenomenon includes the destruction of provocative ads, the intimidation of non-Muslims who wander into Muslim areas, and assassination attempts targeting artists, activists, and politicians who offend Islamists.
Texas students don burqas for lesson whitewashing Islam
Controversy has enveloped Lumberton High School in eastern Texas after the emergence of a photograph showing students wearing burqas and other Islamic garb in geography class. State Senator Dan Patrick put it best: “Could you imagine if someone asked a Muslim student to dress up as a priest?” A girl quoted the teacher as saying, “We’re going to change the way we perceive Islam.” They allegedly were told to think of terrorists as “freedom fighters” and not to call the Holocaust “genocide.” Defending the “freedom fighters” angle, Superintendent John Valastro argued that sometimes “you’re going to have a make-up of students from all over the world in your class. We teach [9/11] as an act of terrorism — whereas they are teaching it to their kids as a revolutionary event.” The episode has inspired the Texas Education Agency to review course materials, starting with the statewide CSCOPE curriculum, which is accused of pro-Islamic bias.
A 2008 Campus Watch article explores Islamic indoctrination in U.S. public schools, some examples of which involve students dressing like Muslims, as in Lumberton, or mimicking acts of religious devotion. For instance, “Amherst Middle School transformed ‘the quaint colonial town of Amherst, N.H., into a Saudi Arabian Bedouin tent community,’” complete with gender segregation, veils, and prayer-related items. More recently, Massachusetts middle school students on a field trip to a Boston mosque were videotaped participating in prayers.
Left: The Lumberton High School lesson that resulted in this infamous photo allegedly sanitized the treatment of women in the Islamic world and the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Right: St. Mary’s Bryanston Square is a Christian school that offers halal meat. |
Londonistan: Christian school regrets pork-tainted halal meals
Halal disputes continue to rock the UK, with the BBC reporting that “pork DNA has been found in halal chicken sausages served in a primary school in Westminster, central London,” prompting the borough to remove all meat from school menus. Putting aside legitimate concerns about truth in labeling, these controversies pull back the curtain on the inroads made by halal cuisine. In Westminster, the BBC notes, “halal sausages are served in 15 primary schools, two nurseries, one special school, and one pupil referral unit, which take only halal meat.” Moreover, the school at the center of this row, St. Mary’s Bryanston Square, is run by the Church of England.
Perhaps it should be no surprise that some Christian schools in the UK have gone halal, based on the many Muslims enrolled in them. “About half the school is Muslim,” a St. Mary’s governor has revealed. At one Catholic school in Birmingham, nine out of ten kids are Muslim. A 2010 IW blog post looks at interfaith conflicts in Christian schools, whose accommodation efforts have included installing Muslim prayer facilities and even curtailing Christian worship.
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For additional news and analysis, please visit the IW website.