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Official in party that says Islam does not Belong to Germany converts to Islam

  Wagner, didn’t give any detailed reasons for his conversion or resignation from the AfD. His only comment has been that he converted for “personal reasons,” and that he was not pressured to quit after his conversion by the AfD. It would stand to reason however that despite the AfD’s claim that it doesn’t discriminate against Muslims it would be difficult to be a member of a party whose avowed stance is anti-Islam. The Atlantic published an article titled “the strange cases of anti-Islam politicians turned Muslims.” The article also gets into a bit of murky psycho-social analysis about conversion, and a not completely factual claim about their historically not being any or many cases of European critics converting to Islam before the rise of anti-Islam political parties. In fact there are many stories of European converts from the past who were critics of Islam or anti-Islam, many of them would settle in Muslim nations.

Greece: Neo-Nazi Group Threatens Muslim Association

It boggles the mind that an organization would name itself after an group that used to attack slaves but it’s not surprising coming from a neo-fascist organization that wants to “purify” Greece. via. AlJazeera English

Athens, Greece – A neo-Nazi organisation has threatened the Muslim Association of Greece and pro-migrant organisations, amid an uptick in anti-immigrant violence(link is external) in the Greek capital.

On Thursday, the organisation said it had received a menacing phone call from Crypteia, a far-right group that attacked the home of an Afghan child last year.

“We are the group that kills, burns, hits and tortures immigrants, mainly Muslims,” the caller said, according to Anna Stamou of the Muslim Association of Greece.

The caller contacted the organisation from a blocked number and identified himself as part of Crypteia. He boasted of the group’s attack on the home of an 11-year-old Afghan refugee, identified only as Emir in Greek media, in November. Then, masked men had attacked the boy’s home after he gained national attention for being prevented from carrying a Greek flag during a school parade. They threw beer bottles and stones at the home, shattering the windows, and left a note reading: “Go back to your village. Leave.” “We reported [Thursday’s phone call] to officials here, then late at night we discovered that many organisations had the same threat,” Stamou told Al Jazeera, explaining that the Greek Forum for Migrants and others received similar phone calls. Other civil society groups, which requested anonymity, confirmed that they were among those threatened. “We are not intimidated as groups, Muslims or anti-fascists. The whole society is being targeted by these actions,” Stamou added. “We don’t accept threats.” Crypteia’s name is an apparent reference to a group of ancient Spartans who were notorious for attacking slaves. The vigilante outfit is believed to have stemmed from the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party, which has 16 seats in the Greek parliament. Greek police were not immediately available for comment. There are around 200,000 Muslims in Athens, according to the Muslim Association of Greece, a civil society group advocating for indigenous Muslims, Greek converts, refugees, migrants and others. In 2010, the Pew Research Center said there were 500,000 Muslims in the country, but this number has increased with refugees and migrants, most of whom come from Muslim-majority countries. Tina Stavrinaki, legal officer at the Racist Violence Recording Network, said it was clear that “Muslims are the target”. “They said the same thing [to all the groups threatened],” she told Al Jazeera. “They said they take responsibility for attacks against migrants almost everywhere.” Read the rest of the article here…

In 2017 Attacks Increased by 44% Against Muslim Americans

2017 saw another spike in hate crimes against Muslims, however some see a silver lining in a report study that finds that less people support Trump’s “Muslim ban” than previously.

via. Middle East Eye

When President Donald Trump announced his “Muslim ban” – a law that would keep citizens from six predominately Muslim states from entering the US – around this time last year, the country witnessed a wave of Islamophobia. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that 2017 was one of the worst years for Muslims in America, with attacks on community members increasing by 44 percent from the year before.

Since then, the so-called Muslim ban has morphed into several versions, with many states’ supreme courts weighing in on the legality of Trump’s executive order, which for now targets Iran, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Chad, North Korea and Venezuela.

But this week, a study published in Political Behaviour, a quarterly academic journal, found that Trump’s anti-Islamic sentiment has backfired in some ways.

A team of political scientists from the University of Delaware, Michigan State University and University of California in Riverside found a silver lining to a survey they conducted. Trump’s anti-Muslim actions, which became a cornerstone of his election campaign and later his immigration policy, have changed national perceptions of the controversial law.

Read the full article…

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Dutch Reporters Blast US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra For Lying About “No Go Zones”

US Ambassador to The Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra (R) gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the US embassy, in The Hague, on January 10, 2018 after presenting his diplomatic credentials to The Netherlands’ King. / AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYS (Photo credit should read JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images)

The US Ambassador to the Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra, was under the impression that he could bullshit his way out of being held accountable for lies he propagated about “no-go zones(link is external)” in the Netherlands (where Muslims supposedly don’t allow non-Muslims to enter), and Muslims are burning Dutch politicians to death. The Dutch press, unlike the US media, seems to be more independent and less of a bunch of sycophants seeking to curry favor with whoever is in power. Read the full article

CJ Werleman on Quilliam’s faulty report tying culture, race to Grooming Gangs

 

By on December 18, 2017 in Loon-at-large

Quilliam, a UK-based “counter-extremism” organization favored by racists and bigots on both sides of the pond, and one whose funding we’ve exposed and whose leaders’ ideological affiliations we’ve analyzed in the past released a report whose basis and conclusion run on the familiar, tried and true racist formula of attempting to tie culture, religion to criminality. CJ Werleman discusses why it isn’t only absurdly flawed but a reward for its racist backers. via. Medium

Given all of the above, it’s not surprising then that the report found that 84 percent of 264 convictions of grooming gang members were men of Asian origin, and even less surprising, it concluded with an assertion these gangs of mostly British-Pakistani men “have been influenced by the cultural conditions of their home country and a wider failure of British society to integrate these men into their adoptive culture.”

Basically, it reads as the sum total of every racist, white nationalist’s wet dream: a report that not so subtly evangelizes the purity and perfection of white society, one that is corrupted only by external villains and influences. The report reads like the platform of any ultranationalist, far right political party, blaming the demise of Western society on immigration, multiculturalism, and lack of ethnic assimilation. “We’’ll be saved, our jobs will return, and our streets will be safer when they leave or stop arriving” is the subtext to every racist narrative.

Read the entire article here

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India: Guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Followers Riot After His Rape Conviction

Reza Aslan should’ve interviewed this guy when he went to India along with Agoras.Indian Guru Ram Rahim Singh, has all the markers of a charlatan who takes advantage of the followers of his sect in the same way that televangelists do in the US. The flamboyant Guru is also a self-styled “movie star,” and “singer.”
via. AlJazeera English At least 28 people have been killed in India as violent protests erupted after a court convicted a self-styled “godman” of raping two female followers. Friday’s verdict angered thousands of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s supporters who said he was innocent. Singh was found guilty in a case dating back to 2002 at the headquarters of his Dera Sacha Sauda group in the northern town of Sirsa. Supporters rampaged in response, setting fire to government buildings, attacking railway stations, petrol stations and television vans in towns across the northern states of Punjab and Haryana soon after the verdict was announced, witnesses said. Hundreds of Indian police and soldiers patrolled Panchkula, the town where the court gave its verdict on Singh, as local officials feared an outbreak of violence. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse the protesters. The violence left at least 28 dead, including some with bullet wounds, and more than 250 injured, according to BS Sandhu, a top Haryana police official. He said more than 1,000 of the guru’s supporters had been detained in Panchkula on charges of arson and destruction of public property.
Read the rest of the article…

India: Guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Followers Riot After His Rape Conviction

Reza Aslan should’ve interviewed this guy when he went to India along with Agoras.Indian Guru Ram Rahim Singh, has all the markers of a charlatan who takes advantage of the followers of his sect in the same way that televangelists do in the US. The flamboyant Guru is also a self-styled “movie star,” and “singer.”
via. AlJazeera English At least 28 people have been killed in India as violent protests erupted after a court convicted a self-styled “godman” of raping two female followers. Friday’s verdict angered thousands of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s supporters who said he was innocent. Singh was found guilty in a case dating back to 2002 at the headquarters of his Dera Sacha Sauda group in the northern town of Sirsa. Supporters rampaged in response, setting fire to government buildings, attacking railway stations, petrol stations and television vans in towns across the northern states of Punjab and Haryana soon after the verdict was announced, witnesses said. Hundreds of Indian police and soldiers patrolled Panchkula, the town where the court gave its verdict on Singh, as local officials feared an outbreak of violence. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse the protesters. The violence left at least 28 dead, including some with bullet wounds, and more than 250 injured, according to BS Sandhu, a top Haryana police official. He said more than 1,000 of the guru’s supporters had been detained in Panchkula on charges of arson and destruction of public property.
Read the rest of the article…

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Aljazeera: Muslims return to CAR to find their homes are gone

There has been an extraordinary amount of violence perpetuated against Muslims in the Central African Republic. At one point all its Muslims had been ‘ethnically cleansed’ and all its mosques essentially destroyed. Ilisha series from a few years ago on CAR is a must read.

Now some of those who were driven out are returning “to nothing.”

Bangui, Central African Republic – M Babakir Ali cuts a lonely figure sitting on a plastic chair outside a rundown cafe in the PK5 district of Bangui.

Once the owner of five houses and 18,000 square metres of land in the Foulbe district of Pk13, on the outskirts of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, Ali is now reduced to a pair of jeans and a short white sleeved shirt. The thin vertical stripes are faintly visible beyond the creases. He is a refugee in his own city.

“I left for Chad in January 2014 because of what happened on the streets of Bangui,” Ali says.

Ali says he watched as bodies of young Muslim men were dragged through the streets of the capital and then piled at a local mosque in what was to signal the changing fortunes for Muslims in the country.

He was right.

In early January, Muslims in the PK5, PK12, PK13 districts of Bangui were hunted down, mutilated, burned alive and left on the streets. Muslims in the towns of Bossangoa, Bozoum, Bouca, Yaloke, Mbaiki, Bossembele and others also fled, as Anti-balaka embarked on a reign of terror across the northwest and southwestern regions.

Ali gathered his family, and fled to neighbouring Chad, too.

With the unrest in Bangui lifting in 2016 as the country neared elections, he decided to come home.

But he knew he would face a new struggle on his return.

“I knew my houses and my land, that everything had been taken,” 45-year-old Ali says. “I knew I would be coming back to nothing.”

Ali speaks in short and abrupt sentences. The already battered plastic chair bends and shifts with his every gesture. There is a calm dissonance in his moist, jaundiced eyes even as he explains that his property was sold to a third party by a local chief.

“I am not the only one. So many from my district have returned, and have nowhere to go,” Ali says, looking away.

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    • B.D.S

      What part of my post was difficult for you.

    • Peter Davies

      ??

    • B.D.S

      “I find you guys (so including Illisha) to be hostile, heavily sarcastic”

      Lol. How do you expect for people white supremacy has been constantly subjugating and abusing both physically and physiologically for centuries-on to respond?

      When white supremacist colonial/imperial powers simultaneously bomb entire countries and a vast majority of white people keep on approving this policies by voting for them. Not only that, but keep justifying by embracing the excuses put forth by the architects of these racist imperialist policies – (I.e, *we* mass bomb for humanitarianism, *you* respond with terrorism). This is a level of fascism and racism one can only respond to either by hostility, or if you’re lucky enough to even be capable at producing sarcasm at this point.

      White supremacy demand complete submission. Challenge its physical violence and, you’re “terrorist”. Challenge its physiological abuses via multi millions $ propaganda industries and, you’re hostile.

    • B.D.S

      Just say, Muslims are/shouldB my subjects and go., fucking Nazi.

    • B.D.S

      Other than you Islamizing white supremacy imperialist problems.

    • B.D.S

      “critic of islam”. What is that?

    • Friend of Bosnia

      The truth is out there for those who want to know. Nobody should have the cheek of trying to convince me that the genocide against Bosniaks, Tutsi, Central African Muslims and Rohingya, didn’t happen or aren’t happening.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Stop playing the victim already. Especially now as the “peaceful” Budhists of Rakhine State are committing on the Rohingya the same things the Serbs did to the Bosniaks! Mass murder and expulsion, in short, genocide, to dispossess them of the land they lived on for centuries. So then, when unfriendly strangers, or my own non-Muslim neighbors come my way with murderous intent, as they did in BiH in 1992-95, after having stated clearly that they will cleanse the country of an unwanted population to which i happen to belong, do you really expect of me to turn the other cheek and be led like a lamb to the slaughter? Do you really want of me to expect mercy from my enemies.

Study Finds Militants Have Little Knowledge of Islam

Bangkok, Thailand – February 20, 2014 : Apple Iphone5s held in one hand showing its screen with Facebook and WhatsApp application icons.

Reports over the years have established that individuals who join militant organizations such as ISIS are either completely ignorant or have very little knowledge of Islam. Muslims have been pointing this out for ages. Now there is a study, this time out of Germany that confirms this fact once again.

via. Huffington Post

A group of German scholars at the Universities of Bielefeld and Osnabrück analyzed 5,757 WhatsApp messages found on a phone seized by police following a terrorist attack in the spring of 2016. The messages were exchanged among 12 young men involved in the attack. The attack itself was not identified in the report.

Deutsche Welle noted that the timeframe suggested it may have been a bombing at a Sikh temple in Essen carried out in April of that year by a group of German teens with reported links to Islamic extremism.

Researchers conducting the study said the young men’s conversations demonstrated little understanding of their professed faith and that the group constructed a “Lego Islam” to suit their purposes.

People don’t join these groups out of a commitment to Islam but usually because of a perceived or actual grievance, and the influence of a close circle of peers.

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    • Awesome

      That’s a convenient narrative, but I don’t think the evidence bears it out. Many are well educated and appear to be productive, well adjusted citizens, until they aren’t

      It is possible to be well-educated in one respect while also being under-educated (not necessarily uneducated) in another, and I am not so sure that productivity and attempts to adjust are always going to be enough to mask or suppress the raw emotions of anger and/or trauma that may still be lingering inside.

    • B.D.S

      Welcome to discovering that George.

      *When the white supremacist fog is lifted it*

    • B.D.S

      White supremacy (NATO) is currently invading 8 Muslim countries. And has more than 1000’s militaries bases.

    • B.D.S

      “Daesh soldiers” call them by their name. Do you call NATO out of their name ?

    • Floki

      Great to see you! I hope you’ve had some well deserved time off and are enjoying this insanely unpredictable world.

      By the way, I’ve not yet made it to Valhalla (that silly place) … thankfully.

  • Hey there, nice to see you!

Woman In Ghana Stoned To Death For Witchcraft

A mob set upon Madam Yednboka Keena and killed for the crime of witchcraft.

Punishments such as stoning are imagined as only occurring among Muslims but as we’ve noted in past articles that just isn’t true. Stoning, cutting limbs, lashing etc. are carried out across the world by non-Muslims as well.

In many parts of the world, particularly parts of Africa hunting and killing witches is a recurrent issue. Danios noted in 2010 that some Christians take the Biblical command to kill witches literally.:

Yet, few Westerners realize that witch hunts are now an international problem…and it is not an area of concern limited to Muslim majority countries like Saudi Arabia.  Would it interest the Catholic apologist Robert Spencer to know that witch hunts are much more prevalent amongst Christians than Muslims?  Some Evangelicals continue to take the Bible quite literally, following its commandment: “Thou shalt not allow a sorceress to live” (Exodus, 22:18), and “sorcerers amongst you must be put to death” (Leviticus, 20:27).

Sadly, a 67 year-old woman in Ghana was recently stoned to death by a mob on the accusation that she was a witch. These stories receive little to no coverage in the West, as they don’t fit the neat bifurcation often propagated in media narratives. (h/t: Dawud Walid)

via. Modern Ghana

A 67-year-old woman has been stoned to death by the people of Tindongo in the Upper East region, after she was accused of being a witch, a claim the deceased denied vehemently.

A local reporter William Jalulah who spoke to host of Morning Starr on Starr 103.5FM Thursday stated that , was taken to the Pelungu Chief but the Chief allegedly told her accusers that she could not handle the matter since there wasn’t enough evidence to handle the matter.

The Pelungu was then handed over to the Tindongo Chief but before the Chief could sit on the matter a mob whisked the old lady and meted instant justice to her by stoning her to death.

According to William, people in the community allege that the old lady had been visiting them in their dreams at night and was the cause of several misfortunes in their life.

Superintendent Samuel Punobyin, the Bolgatanga Municipal Police Commander, with oversight responsibility for the Tongo confirmed the incident adding that the body had been taken to the morgue but has since been released to the relatives for burial.

The incident happened Monday, May 29, 2017, the same Captain Maxwell Mahama was murdered by the people of Denkyira West in the Central region.

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    • NotAMuslamic

      Who is it who has given the impression Muslims don’t know their own book?

      There’s the idea among atheists that Islam is a “ripoff” of christianity, therefore muslims are just like christians in that they haven’t actually read their holy book, which is sheer nonsense because, as you pointed out, there are at least millions of huffaz out there.

  • I had to Google “neckbeards.” Useful new term.

Arab Muslim Comedian Ramy Youssef Kills It On The Late Show

It’s rare to see a not so cheesy, and or demeaning stand up routine from a Muslim comedian that is not defined simply by his Muslimness/Islamicness but crosses over without comprises to the dominant culture. I think he did good! What did you all think?

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    • HSkol

      Well, I’ve been waiting for someone else to say, but no one has – so I must: Ramy Youssef is da Bomb!

    • HSkol

      Thumbs up!

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