Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/26/2008

• Muslim Man Jailed for Hate Crime
  
• A Textbook Case of Intolerance
  
• Global Warming the Cult
  
• Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood Goes On-Line On Facebook
  
• ‘The Europeans Are Chasing Illusions’
  
• Surveillance Law Vote ‘Betrayed Tenets of a Democratic State’
  
• Italy: State of Emergency Over Immigration
  
• Article Comparing Us, Russian Identity: “Is Russia the Better Brand?”

Thanks to Insubria, Pundita, VH, the Queen of Bohemia, Fjordman, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Details are below the fold.
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Muslim man jailed for hate crime

The Calgary Sun

Attacking a Jewish girl and the friends who came to her rescue has landed a Muslim man a one-year jail sentence.

Mustafa Taj must also serve a year of probation following his release for what provincial court Judge Bill Cummings ruled was a racially motivated assault.

“In this case, I’m satisfied that imprisonment is necessary,” Cummings said in accepting the Crown’s bid for a jail term.

Prosecutors Ken McCaffrey and Inayat Jetha had sought a sentence of up to two years for the hate crime.

Taj, 21, was convicted in May of attacking four teenagers the night of Nov. 3, 2006, while they waited for a C-Train at the Sunnyside LRT station.

Taj approached the group around 10:45 p.m. and asked “who’s Jewish.” Nichola Cordato, then 16, stated “me” and Taj grabbed her and said, “I’m Muslim and hate Jews.”

He then slapped her in the face and pulled her hair before her friends, Jessica Motta, Kayla Hungle and Daniel Ball attempted to intervene.

Hungle attempted to prevent Taj from further attacking Cordato and was punched in the face by him.

Motta then intervened and was punched in the face, pulled to the ground by her hair and kicked in the stomach and ribs.

When Ball tried to stop the assaults, he was thrown onto the C-Train tracks where he fell onto his back and was spat upon by Taj.

During the melee, Taj called Cordato a “Jewish piece of (crap).”

Before sentencing, McCaffrey called evidence of a similar assault a year earlier in which Taj approached a black male at an LRT station and assaulted him.

Keak Khor said Taj swore at him for being Sudanese and African before he and another man attacked him. Cummings agreed with the Crown the previous assault was also motivated by “bias, prejudice or hate.” Since Taj has been in custody on the assault charges since March 14, he was credited with double time for his remand custody, which leaves him another three months to serve.


A Textbook Case of Intolerance

Changing the world one schoolbook at a time.

By Anne Applebaum

Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice tests, the bane of any fourth grader’s existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report put out by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom last week, it seems that Saudi Arabians find them useful, too. Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question that appears in a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, Monotheism and Jurisprudence, in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish “true” from “false” belief in god:

Q. Is belief true in the following instances:

a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.

b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.

c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.

The correct answer, of course, is c). According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn’t enough just to worship god or just to love other believers—it is important to hate unbelievers as well. By the same token, b) is also wrong. Even a man who worships god cannot be said to have “true belief” if he loves unbelievers.

“Unbelievers,” in this context, are Christians and Jews. In fact, any child who sticks around in Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught that “Jews and Christians are enemies of believers.” They will also be taught that Jews conspire to “gain sole control of the world,” that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day “the rocks or the trees” will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.

These passages, it should be noted, are from new, “revised” Saudi textbooks. Following a similar analysis of earlier versions of these same textbooks in 2006, American diplomats immediately approached their Saudi counterparts about the more disturbing passages, and the Saudis agreed to conduct a “comprehensive revision … to weed out disparaging remarks towards religious groups.”

The promised revision—hailed, at the time, as a great diplomatic success—was supposed to be finished by the beginning of the 2008-09 school year and was accompanied by a Saudi PR campaign. Among other things, the Saudis sponsored an interfaith dialogue last week, one that all participants hailed as a great breakthrough—despite the fact that the actual meetings took place in Spain as it would be too embarrassing for Saudi Arabia to host Christian and Jewish religious leaders on its own soil. But although the beginning of the 2008-09 school year is nearly upon us, the only textbook revisions have been superficial, and the most disturbing part of the message—that faithful Muslims should hate Jews and Christians—remains.


Global Warming the Cult

And while Greenland sun bathes and prospers, there is a delicious story from Great Britain that combines two celebrity social causes of the last forty years, population control and global warming. Two physicians, John Guillebaud and Pip Hayes, writing in the British Medical Journal now call for limiting family size to two children, especially in the post-industrial cultures such as Europe and America, because our children generate more greenhouse emissions than the children of the Third World. Yes, the third child is presented as the culprit. Greenland melts because we have too many children. I was suspicious at first that this was a dead-on send-up, but upon close examination there does not seem to be any irony whatsoever in the proposal. Still, I find it impossible to read the following without breaking down laughing:

“But what about planned pregnancies? Should we now explain to UK couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less child than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren?

“We must not put pressure on people, but by providing information on the population and the environment, and appropriate contraception for everyone (and by their own example), doctors should help to bring family size into the arena of environmental ethics, analogous to avoiding patio heaters and high carbon cars.”


Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood goes on-line on Facebook

Cairo, 25 July (AKI) — The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has launched a discussion forum on Facebook, the popular social networking website.

A group of young Muslims decided to put the Muslim Brotherhood on Facebook after they received the go-ahead to do so from the Brotherhood’s second-in-command, Muhammad Habib.

The creators of the project decided to call themselves an “electronic student cell of the Muslim Brotherhood” and their aim to to push for the return of an Islamic Caliphate [a Muslim state].”


More Suspects Sent away as Violent Crime Reports Surge

THE HAGUE, 26/07/08 — The number of violent crimes registered by police in the Netherlands increased by 18 percent between 2002 and 2007. But in the same period, more and more suspects escaped prosecution for no apparent reason.

Data published by the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) show that last year, the police registered 1.2 million crimes, about the same amount as in 2006. This meant a downward trend in registered crime observed since 2002 came to an end. This decline was however wholly due to fewer reports of ‘petty crime’ such as theft (minus 28 percent).

The registered number of violent crimes conversely increased by 18 percent between 2002 and 2007. But in 2007, over 41 percent of violent crime cases were thrown out by the Public Prosecutor (OM). In 2003, this was ‘just’ 33 percent. The percentage of dismissals has increased since.

“With respect to violent crimes, there has been a remarkably high amount of ‘policy dismissals’ since 2003,” confirmed CBS. In case of a policy dismissal a suspect is not prosecuted “in the general interest”, CBS stated. But what this means remains unclear.

The OM can dismiss a case on technical grounds — prosecution is not likely to lead to a conviction due to insufficient evidence — or as ‘policy dismissals’. The dismissal rate for violent crimes has been higher than for other crimes for many years.

As well as dismissing more violent crime cases for no apparent reason, the OM is also increasingly settling such cases outside the courts. In 2007, 19 percent of all settlements by the OM concerned violent crimes, versus 11 percent in 2000. The OM did receive relatively more violent crime cases from the police than minor crime cases, which distorts the figures somewhat.


‘The Europeans Are Chasing Illusions’

Dutch author Leon de Winter talks with SPIEGEL about his new novel, which is set in 2024, the threats mounting against Israel and the assimilation of Muslims in Europe.

SPIEGEL: Mr. de Winter, your new book — “The Right of Return” — is a novel, but it actually describes a political vision. In the book, it is the year 2024, and Israel has shrunk to just a few square kilometers around Tel Aviv, which is surrounded by enemies. Are you simply playing with some ideas here or is this a serious prediction?

Leon de Winter: Both. Israel is menaced by two threats. On the one hand, by the hatred of its enemies, which today is primarily stirred up by Iran, and on the other hand, by the erosion spreading throughout Israeli society. There are three groups that have little in common: the Orthodox Jews, the Israeli Arabs and the secular Jews, who currently make up the majority of the population. But this majority is dwindling. The conflict between these three lifestyles is every bit as much of a threat — if not even more dangerous — to the existence of Israel as its outside menaces.


Surveillance law vote ‘betrayed tenets of a democratic state’

Bangladeshi refugee and writer Tasneem Khalil explains why the Riksdag’s vote in favour of the surveillance law has him feeling let down by the country to which he fled to escape state-sanctioned domestic spying.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin.

On a personal level, I find it ironic that on June 18th 2008, exactly one year after my family and I were granted political asylum in Sweden, the Riksdag passed a draconian surveillance law.

I’m sure people who have found refuge in Sweden after fleeing police states from around the globe can relate to my emotions. But I doubt that the 143 Riksdag members who voted in favour of the bill will ever be able to understand how I feel.

Swedes do not have to watch their back while walking the streets, or invent a coded language for talking to their wives over telephone, or use cryptic sentences in their emails.

Unlike them, I have suffered the pain inflicted by surveillance state at its worst.

Back in Bangladesh, my home country, I was under constant surveillance for months. I was followed by operatives, my phones were tapped, and my office computer was bugged.

The surveillance was followed by my detention and torture at the hands of the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency on May 11th, 2007.


Sweden: Court ties murder attempt to Islam

A court in Jönköping drew parallels between a murder attempt of a woman and the perpetrator’s attitude towards women, which according to the court is characterized by Arab culture and that the man is Muslim.

At the Discrimination Ombudsman they were surprised at the wording of the sentencing and several local Muslim associations are critical.


Italy: State of emergency over immigration

Rome: The Italian government announced a nationwide state of emergency on Saturday in reaction to a phenomenal increase in illegal immigration to the country’s south.

The Silvio Berlusconi government’s move is to provide local authorities with greater means to deal with the rising tide of illegals arriving by boat.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni plans to build new intake centres throughout the country, the daily La Repubblica reported.


Italy: Crime package against illegal immigrants

Silvio Berlusconi was re-elected in April promising to crack down on crime

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has won parliamentary backing for a crime package critics say discriminates against immigrants.

Under new laws approved by the Senate, illegal immigrants convicted of crimes will now face jail sentences a third longer than those for Italians.

Courts will be able to jail illegal immigrants for up to four years rather than simply deport them


Article comparing US, Russian identity: “Is Russia the Better Brand?”

“Through all the tumultuous change and flux associated with globalization and the hyper 24/7 economy, Russia — and a handful of other nations — has proven that cultural identity does not need to be sold out for a nation to succeed.”


New Zealander politician’s eloquent quote on multiculturalism

(which applies to the US too)

“Did we come here to build a new country with its own culture, or a resettlement of 50 different cultures from somewhere else?

“[We must] make up our mind. If we are to have a destiny and shared values and a New Zealand way, it is one or the other but it can’t be both.” (Mr. Peters appears to be of mixed Maori and Anglo-Saxon ancestry BTW.)

The Queen of Bohemia, who sent this link, adds:

“This quote is very poignant to me, as when I was a girl the question was settled, ‘We came here (America) to build a new country with its own culture.’ It became unsettled with the rise of the multi-cult.”