Compromise or censorship? London gallery covers artwork after blasphemy complaints

CAP

London’s Saatchi Gallery covered two paintings which showed the text of shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam, after complaints from Muslim visitors. RT UK guests debate over whether it was the right call.

The artist SKU used the holy Arabic text, which professes belief in God and acceptance of Muhammad as God’s prophet, in two works, both of which allude to the design of the US national flag and one also shows a nude woman. Some visitors complained about the pieces and called for their removal, but the gallery refused. SKU suggested a compromise solution: keep his work on display but cover them with sheets.

CAP

RT hosted a debate between Muslim rights campaigner Salman Butt and Andre Walker, a columnist at the New York Observer, on whether the situation was resolved properly. Butt says framing the situation in terms of blasphemy laws would be wrong.

“A group of people said: ‘We think you should take this down.’ Another group of peoples said: ‘No, you shouldn’t take this down.’ They came to what they believe to be a compromise,” he said.

“If you don’t like this picture, you can join me in not going to that gallery. What they’ve actually said is: ‘We don’t like this picture, therefore you can’t look at it either,’” Walker parried. “This is not a compromise.”

Salvini, Orban alliance: “If the Left wins, Europe will become an Islamic Caliphate”

See the source image

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The Hungarian Prime MinisterViktor Orbán  and the Italian Interior Ministe Matteo Salvini are planning to fight the current EU agenda.

Salvini visited Orbán to inform himself about the border fence between Hungary and Serbia. Orban even referred to Salvini as the most important man in Europe.

Orban stated that he is ready to work with dynamic and vital men while calling the EU tired and powerless.

“I hope new powers will rise up and accomplish to build something”, ending with “Europe needs Matteo Salvini.”

Salvini underlined that he is not right-wing but that his party simply represents an alternative for Europe. He acknowledged not knowing how many parties will join him or how strong they will be.

“But, I hope we will be very strong because if the Left wins Europe will become an Islamic caliphate”he stated.

Both men called on the European People’s Party to adopt their views unless they want to commit political suicide. If the EPP decided to follow their example both expressed willingness to work with them.

EPP President Joseph Daul on the other hand strongly opposes this. He allegedly said that this would have to happen without him and that he would not accept to be Chair of the European Commission if it required the help of Orban’s Fidesz party.

After the suspension of the Fidesz party for its criticism of George Soros and EU-Commission President Juncker for their migration policies cooperation between Euro-Skeptics is becoming more and more likely.

Together with the Alternative for Germany, the Freedom Party of Austria, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, the Finnish Perussuomalaiset, the Estonian Conservative People’s Party, the Dutch Freedom Party, the Slovakian Sme Rodina, the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Danish People’s Party and Salvini’s Lega represent the European Alliance of Peoples and Nations and could become quite formidable after European Parliament elections.

PARIS: ISLAMIST BUS DRIVER REFUSES TO PICK UP WOMAN BECAUSE OF SHORT SKIRT

Paris: Islamist Bus Driver Refuses to Pick Up Woman Because of Short Skirt

“Think about dressing properly”

A bus driver in Paris described as an “Islamist” refused to pick up the daughter of a famous Algerian poet because her skirt was too short.

According to a report by Italian newspaper Il Giornale, the incident occurred last Tuesday at the Botzaris stop near the Buttes Chaumont park in the 19th arrondissement.

In a Facebook post (which was subsequently censored), Algerian poet Kamel Bencheikh revealed how his 29-year-old daughter Elise and her friend attempted to board the bus at 11pm in the evening.

“When the bus arrived, the driver stopped, looked at them, and left without opening the doors,” wrote Bencheikh.

The girls ran after the bus and managed to catch up to it at a red light. When they asked the driver why they weren’t allowed on board, he responded, “Think about dressing as you should.”

“This individual, who drives a bus and is paid by my taxes, prevented my daughter, a holder of a Navigo pass [subscription pass for public transport in Paris], which was valid and therefore in order, from boarding, only because she was dressed in a skirt,” wrote Bencheikh.

The Paris public transport company RATP promised to investigate the driver, but failed to offer an apology to Elise and her friend. Only a few Republican politicians complained about the incident.

According to the Il Giornale report, Islamists have been entrusted with driving the buses in Paris’ notorious outer suburbs to prevent troublemakers throwing rocks at the vehicles.

“This is the case with Samy Amimour, one of the jihadists who bloodied the Bataclan Theatre,” states the report. “From 2010 to 2012, before going to Syria to fight with the Islamic State, he was a driver for RATP. In the book Mohammed at the wheel — Sharia at the turn, as recalled by Libero, Ghislaine Dumesnit had accused French unions of allowing radicalized Muslims to infiltrate the transport agency, the bus depots were transformed into prayer halls, and drivers were always discriminated against by colleagues of the Islamic faith.”

The media has long declared that “no-go zones” or areas of major cities where de facto sharia law is enforced is all a “conspiracy theory”.

This, despite CNN cameras filming precisely that in London many years ago.

Paris is a Sh*thole

NYT: Trump ‘Siding with Autocrats’ by Weighing Terror Label for Muslim Brotherhood

Members of the Arab-Israeli Islamic Movement chant slogans during a protest in support of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi (portrait) and against the army crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters, in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth on August 17, 2013. AFP PHOTO / AHMAD GHARABLI (Photo credit should read AHMAD …

By Edwin Mora

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration would be “siding with autocrats and roiling [the] Middle East” if it joins several Islamic countries in designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a terrorist organization, the New York Times (NYT) argued this week.

NYT has itself in the past sided with several leftist leaders including Russia’s Joseph Stalinin lying about the Soviet genocide; with Cuba’s Fidel Castro in inflating the size of his guerrilla prior to the Cuban Revolution; and taking money for ads from socialist Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

The Trump administration has been considering labeling MB a terrorist group since soon after taking office in January 2017.

NYT has joined opposition to the move expressed by the likes of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which leads the world in jailed journalists.

On Monday, the Times argued that designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization would “ignite a firestorm in the Middle East,” adding:

Government lawyers had warned that the Muslim Brotherhood did not meet the legal criteria to be designated a terrorist organization. And in a volatile region where American troops were already battling Islamist extremists, the three men believed, taking on the Brotherhood was one fight too many.

The newspaper goes on to note that Trump officials who opposed labeling MB a terror group – namely former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the president’s former national security adviser – are now gone.

Their departure has reportedly opened the door for “autocratic leaders” like Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt to influence the U.S. to move forward with the designation.

NYT reported:

The Trump administration has resurrected the proposal to brand the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, prompting a fierce debate between the government’s political appointees and its career experts.

The designation would impose wide-ranging American economic and travel sanctions on companies and individuals who interact with the loose-knit Islamist movement that was founded in Egypt and is recognized as a legitimate political entity in many Muslim-majority governments.

It is the president’s latest major foreign policy decision that appears to have been heavily influenced by autocratic leaders without first being fully vetted by career American government officials.

NYT identified the “autocratic leaders” as Sisi, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all of whom have already outlawed MB in their respective countries.

The newspaper said those leaders “revile” MB simply because they consider the group a political opponent.

Several Muslim-majority countries — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt — and Russia have already outlawed MB.

Qatar, which has long housed the group, and Turkey appear to remain ardent supporters.

Nevertheless, the Washington Post (WaPo) argued on Monday that “calling the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group would make all Muslims scapegoats.”

In December 2017, MB threatened to “wage war” against the United States in response to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the American embassy there, a move that angered several Muslim countries and jihadi groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

For NYT, that is not reason enough to label the group terrorists. On the contrary, the paper claimed that “unlike the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, there is no evidence that the Egyptian group has called for, or directed, terrorist attacks against American interests.”

Critics have linked the NYT to anti-semitism in recent weeks. Citing unnamed Trump officials, the news outlet noted that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the current national security adviser, have expressed support for the terrorist designation for MB.

The U.S. has already designated top MB offshoot Hamas, a Palestinian group intent on destroying Israel, a terrorist organization.

NYT did not identify the so-called opponents of the designation within the Trump administration.

“Beyond Turkey and Qatar, the Brotherhood or offshoots are also a recognized political party or represented in governments in Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait,” it reported.

The newspaper acknowledged that officials under former President Barack Obama also considered naming MB a terrorist group. NYT, however, did not accuse of Obama of “siding with autocrats” over the consideration as it has with President Trump.

For years, some Republicans in Congress have been proposing the label.

‘We feel alien at home’: Austrians flood popular newspaper with desperate messages over migration

CAP

Austria’s largest newspaper has received an unexpected response after its columnist claimed that the term “population replacement” was not appropriate for the Alpine land. Hundreds of people said it is the reality they live in.

Austria’s Kronen Zeitung daily has admitted that it received“hundreds” of letters from its readers in just over a week, after they said they felt like foreigners in their own homeland because of mass immigration.

The strong response was provoked by the paper’s columnist, Conny Bischofberger. In an interview with Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, she called the notion of “population replacement” a concept used by far-right extremists.”

ALSO ON RT.COMIntegration failure: Report finds 51% Vienna pupils don’t speak German at home

The term, which describes the gradual replacement of a native population by immigrants, is popular among those on the far-right. They use it to portray growing ethnic and religious diversity as a result of some deliberate malicious actions taken by “anti-popular forces.”

After she was confronted by people asking why they should not use the term, Bischofberger dismissed it in an explanatory piece as a conspiracy theory and a mere “feeling” that “may or may not correspond with the real general demographic developments.” However, she apparently failed to strike a chord with Kronen Zeitung readers, who sought to explain that this was a reality they have been living with for years.

On the streets, on public transport and in the municipal buildings: We feel alien at home.

“We were a happy household until 10 years ago. Then everything collapsed like a house of cards,” one person wrote to the newspaper.

“The mood in our condominium has deteriorated so much that we (65 and 68) are ready to move away to finally be able to live in peace again,” another couple wrote.

CAP

“Foreign-language parents with their children do not bother to speak our language… It’s sad, but one doesn’t feel well anymore,” another message read.

In our elementary school, no more excursions are conducted out of consideration for foreign languages, the diet is adapted to religious wishes and the violence of the foreign elementary school boys is frightening.

After receiving hundreds of similar messages, Bischofberger still insisted that, for many people, the notion of “population replacement” came in handy as it allowed them “not to think about the problem behind” mass immigration. However, she also admitted that “it would be cheap to defame all those people, who wrote to the Kronen Zeitung, as xenophobes, racists or far-right extremists.”

Those people were apparently asked “to accept too much migration” and did not receive enough attention from the authorities, the columnist said.

ALSO ON RT.COMTwitter up in arms after ex-Austrian MP says that girls wear headscarves to avoid migrant assaults

Austria took in one of the largest numbers of asylum seekers per capita during the refugee crisis. Some 150,000 people were accepted by the Alpine land since 2015 – which accounts for over one percent of its total population. Such developments gave rise to widespread anti-immigrant sentiment and brought a conservative coalition to power, which adopted a strict stance on migration.

Foreigners constitute 15.8 percent of the Austrian population, and 29.6 percent in the capital, Vienna, according to a 2018 survey. In February, a former MP from the conservative Austrian People’s Party, Marcus Franz, sparked a heated discussion on social media by saying that Austrian-born girls wear headscarves to prevent assaults from migrants on the streets of Vienna.

Watch out, Islamophobia? America’s ‘first Muslim patrol’ hits streets of Brooklyn (VIDEO)

CAP

They’re not cops or armed vigilantes, but Brooklyn’s new ‘Muslim patrol’ hopes to work with police to help make their neighborhood more Muslim-friendly. RT’s Caleb Maupin joined the patrol on its beat.

Founded by a Yemeni migrant and boasting at least 30 members, the Muslim Community Patrol’s (MCP) main aim is to be the “eyes and ears” of Brooklyn’s Muslim community. With uniforms and marked cars complete with sirens, the group could easily be mistaken for regular police – but don’t be fooled. The patrolmen are unarmed and have no police powers. Instead, the group radios to police if they encounter something that requires police action – or firepower. The volunteer-based organization is believed to be the first Muslim ‘patrol’ of its kind in the United States.

The patrol was founded in response to concerns over an uptick in Islamophobia, but they do much more than just patrol the streets. One volunteer who spoke with Maupin said that the group offers counseling, feeds the homeless, and participates in other community outreach projects.

“We’re here to help bridge the community together,” the volunteer said.

Local residents who spoke to RT seemed supportive of the initiative, although a few said the patrol, which mirrors similar groups created by Hasidic and Asian communities in Brooklyn, was cause for concern.

https://www.rt.com/usa/458379-muslim-patrol-brooklyn-police/

 

Shock Video: Muslim Children in Philadelphia Perform Anti-Israel School Play: ‘We Will Chop Off Their Heads’ to Liberate Al Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem

 

Video released Friday by the non-partisan research group MEMRI, which translated the Arabic into English, taken from a Facebook posting by the Muslim American Society Philadelphia chapter last month shows a group of Muslim children in Palestinian scarves performing at a Ummah Day celebration where they sang a pro-Palestine and recited a poem calling for the liberation of Jerusalem and its Al Aqsa mosque that says “We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque… We will subject them to eternal torture.”

(UPDATE: A different video clip mentions “Zionists”) Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, so the heads they would be chopping off would belong to Jews.

Screen images with translations. In one image, children in the back row are seen lifting Korans high over their heads during the song.

MEMRI’s description of the video with translation:

On April 22, 2019, the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia (MAS Philly) uploaded a video of an “Ummah Day” celebration to its Facebook page in which young children wearing Palestinian scarves sang: “Glorious steeds call us and lead us [to] the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us… Take us, oh ships… until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones… Flow, oh rivers of martyrs!” A young girl read a poem praising martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Palestine, and she asked: “Will [Jerusalem] be a hotbed for cowards?” Another young girl read: “We will defend [Palestine] with our bodies… We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque… We will subject them to eternal torture.”

MAS Philly belongs to the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has 42 chapters in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. MAS’ website says that its mission is to “move people to strive for God-consciousness, liberty and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity,” and that its vision is “a virtuous and just American society.”

 

Italian integration “boot camp” forces migrants to do free community work, sing the national anthem and wear “thank you” printed clothes

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At the mayor-founded academy in Bergamo, a group of about 30 uniformed migrants form two neat rows, hands behind their straight backs in a military-style “at ease” position.

In the corridor of a building, they repeat in chorus: “We are the students of the first course of the Accademia dell’Integrazione Grazie Bergamo, Thank you Bergamo”.

Then they break ranks, line up two by two and move to a larger room, where two of the students, wearing white aprons, begin serving lunch.

The “students” are asylum seekers and participating in a boot-camp style one-year programme whose explicit purpose is to integrate migrants.

Participants attend Italian-language classes, get internships at factories in the area and have to follow a strict routine.

They also have to do community service work for free.

The academy’s students can only use their smartphones for a few hours a day. For the best part of the day, their rooms are empty, with perfectly made beds. No language other than Italian is allowed. And they look more like cadets than students.

They must always wear a uniform and have three kinds of outfits.

When they are inside, it is a blue tracksuit with the words “Grazie Bergamo” in large print on the back; the second uniform is orange, similar to waste collectors, and also bears the words “Grazie Bergamo” in large print; the third, worn in free time, is a blue shirt and grey sweater with a small school logo, which also allows them to take the city’s public transportation free of charge.

“This is not a school for everyone”, Giorgio Gori, mayor of Bergamo, a wealthy city in northern Italy, about 50km east of Milan, told Al Jazeera.

It’s no place for slackers, he says, because participants “must respect a series of rules of cohabitation” and professional training is mandatory, “with the aim of getting them to a job”.

To get into the programme, participants must pass three interviews assessing their knowledge of Italian, the level of schooling and their ability to respect the rules.

Christophe Sanchez, the mayor’s chief of staff, who created the academy, believes that Italy’s system of asylum seekers’ management is not working and attributes its failure to the fact that they have rights but few duties: “Asylum seekers can stay in bed all day and there is no legal instrument to force them to do something.”

The underlying message of the academy seems to be that participants must demonstrate that they are hardworking people, that they really like Italy and are not troublemakers – in other words, that they deserve to stay.

The fact that the programme includes free-of-charge community work, not to mention the “Thank you” part in the name, gives the impression that migrants must be grateful.
Stefano Quadri, an activist from the Bergamo migrante antirazzista group, an anti-racist organisation, objects to the idea that migrants need to prove they deserve to be hosted, since asylum is a human right, and says free labour “destroys the local economy”.
*
A worker at the Ruah coop, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, is worried that students live in relative isolation, with little contact with locals: “Integration means inserting a person in society,” he said.
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But organisers brush off criticism, saying that the programme is effective.
“We have so far done 380 hours of volunteer work and all our students understand Italian”, says Sanchez.
*
As for the free labour, Gori insists it is not really free: “Between food, lodging and classes, we are investing 1,000 euros per months on each of them, so in a way they are getting paid.”

SWEDISH DOCTOR SAYS DEADLY PARASITIC DISEASE HAS DOUBLED SINCE ‘REFUGEE’ WAVE

Swedish Doctor Says Deadly Parasitic Disease Has Doubled Since 'Refugee' Wave

“Most people are sick from Syria and Afghanistan”

 | Infowars.com – MAY 2, 2019

An infectious diseases doctor has warned that the number of cases in Sweden of Leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease which can lead to death, has doubled since the 2015 migrant wave.

“Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by an intracellular protozoan parasite (genus Leishmania) transmitted by the bite of a female phlebotomine sandfly,” according to Medscape.

The parasites that spread the disease are common in the Middle East, Africa and in Mediterranean countries, however it is not normally present in northern Europe.

According to Sara Karlsson Söbirk, an infectious doctor at a hospital in Helsingborg who has studied the issue for 20 years, the number of cases in on the increase.

“We have in a collaboration with the Public Health Authority looked at the number of cases between 1993-2016 and see a peak of 35 cases in 2016, probably a direct consequence of the large refugee wave the year before, when most people are sick from Syria and Afghanistan,” said Söbirk.

She notes that most of the cases were found in people who had emigrated to Sweden or who had traveled in the countries where the parasite was present then returned to Sweden.

The parasites can remain in the body for years before being activated as a result of a weak immune system.

“The attack on internal organs is the most serious form of the disease (visceral leishmaniasis) and usually leads to death if it is not detected and treated in time,” reports FriaTider.

Austria: Asylum seekers make death threats against asylum centre employees

By 

Information from the Austrian Interior Ministry has revealed that asylum home staff members have faced numerous threats on their lives from resentful asylum seekers. According to the ministry, no less than 15 serious incidents have occurred in the last year.

As reported by Kronen Zeitung, the information came about in response to a question posed to Austria’s Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the national populist Freedom Party.

According to the report, many of those seeking asylum have made violent threats against asylum centre employees in order to be transferred to different facilities. In Maria Enzerdorf, a small Austrian town of 8,000 people, an asylum seeker intimated an employee with an iron bar simply because he felt like he should be moved to another location.

Varying motivations have acted as catalysts for additional incidents of death threats made against public employees.

In Salzburg, a migrant threatened to murder an employee over food.

In Bergheim, due to a lack of internet access, two migrants became so incensed that they threaten to kill one of the care workers.

A similar case occurred in Italy last year when a 26-year-old Senegalese migrant physically assaulted an asylum home worker because the home hadn’t apparently attended to his requests to set up wireless internet.

Several cases in Austrian asylum homes have also turned physical with a number of employees asserting that migrants have attempted to intimate workers by puffing their chests out at them as well as at staff security guards. In another instance, a conflict with one of the migrants resulted in a worker being injured.

Although none of the attacks mentioned resulted in severe or life-threatening injuries, several government employees working in asylum care in different European countries have been murdered by migrants since the migrant crisis began in 2015.

One of these tragic cases unfolded in 2016 when a Somalian asylum seeker by the name of Youssaf Nuur stabbed to death 22-year-old caseworker Alexandra Mezher.

In 2017, a similar attack happened in Germany when a Nigerian migrant stabbed to death asylum worker Soopika P. in the municipality of Ahaus.

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