Britain’s Fate Is Sealed Following Muslim Baby Boom

Scary 2 year old video (worse now than then):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPmq_wUr9w

 

In January 2014, it was announced that 320,000 children (aged under five) out of a total of 3.5 million are born into Muslim families in England and Wales. This is approximately 9.2% and demonstrates a colossal demographic change in the younger population.
Leftists and liberals have always scoffed at the suggestion of higher Muslim birth rates, calling it the fiction of ‘right-wing nut-jobs’. Well I don’t want to say I told you so, but it is damning evidence of the exponential Muslim growth compared to the rest of society!
Even in politically correct Britain the newsreaders had tellingly unenthusiastic expressions as they delivered the news to the nation; however there was no elaboration on the true horror of what this trend actually means. Barely registering more than a cursory check in the mainstream media, this demographic shift has far reaching consequences for the future direction Britain will take.
In the 2001 UK census, Muslims accounted for 3% of the population. Yet a decade later, in the 2011 census, due to birth rates and uncontrolled (and unwanted) Muslim immigration, the figure ‘officially’ rose to 4.8% (not including illegal immigrants). Now with Muslims currently reproducing at double the rate of everyone else, Britain’s future looks more Islamic than ever.
Why We Should Worry
There is certainly a case that the non-Muslim population is not reproducing enough, but why is the expanding Muslim population such an issue? Pamela Geller describes in the article; ‘The Effects of Mass Muslim Immigration’ some of the many concerns we should have, but I would like to add some additional valid fears.
Firstly, it matters because if these trends continue over the next couple of generations it will destroy the UK economically. (Y.K. Cherson describes the implications of this in ‘How the West Is Committing Financial Suicide’). One example being in 2010 it was revealed that over 50% of Muslim men and over 75% of Muslim women were economically inactive in the UK. Alsostudies have shown that 55% of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, and in Bradford, this rises to 75%. So whilst the ‘average Brit’ was working hard and paying taxes, those taxes were paying for the ‘average Muslim’ to not work, marry their cousin and recklessly have children (approximately half of Britain’s Muslims have Pakistani heritage). If this cycle does not stop, the nation will then go into financial meltdown, if it has not already. Interestingly, despite Muslims making up around 22% of the global population, they account for only 5% GDP.
This is what Assistant Secretary-General of the Islamist ‘Muslim Council of Britain’ (MCB), Ibrahim Mogra said of the news of the high Muslim birth rates: “This is a sign that Islam is becoming an integral part of British society”. I would say it illustrates how Islam has elbowed its way in and is an “integral drain and division”! Mogra’s statement is actually incorrect because more and more young Muslims reject the Western society they are born into and want to see Sharia implemented.
Secondly, aside from the welfare payouts, the added security risks and annual £billions costs of monitoring Muslims, there is the impact of how this boom in the Muslim population affects our culture and society as a whole.
Unlike any other religion Islam is different because it calls for oppressive laws for Muslims and non-Muslims that are contrary to our Judeo-Christian based secular laws. This makes Islam incompatible with Western society because Islam has to separate itself from the mainstream society in order to survive. The multiculturalists may be satisfied with the damage they have caused with importing Muslims, but the notion of Islam playing its part in a fully functional multicultural society is a complete misnomer.
Islam by its very nature is supremacist, discriminatory, totalitarian and expansionist, like for example when Islam is in the ascendancy, it will subdue and humiliate minorities by enforcing theJizya status. When Muslims are in the minority their pattern is of unruly behaviour, playing the victim and calling for special treatment. This usually increases exponentially to their size, until finally they are powerful enough finally to enact a power grab.
The goal of Islam is not to peacefully coexist but to eventually implement the Shari’a worldwide.
Changing Demographics Leads to Changing Behaviour
Muslims may seem peaceful in tiny numbers but as their numbers increase, the negative behaviour also increases exponentially which impacts the rest of our society. This is an important aspect that liberals and politicians fail to grasp; Muslims have a different psychology to non-Muslims, which affects their attitude and behaviour in their adopted Western countries.Nicolai Sennels describes here perfectly how Muslims view their own identity, deal with anger, attitudes to non-Muslims and their values, etc.
Add large numbers of Muslims to a country like Britain with Judeo-Christian values and we have seen evidence of rising influence and/or bad behaviour, for example:

• An estimated 25% of all meat consumed in the UK is now halal. Muslims prisoners demand to be given halal food and special privileges; non-Muslim schoolchildren are often fed halal without their knowledge and many times the food at sports events is halal only.
• Muslims are vastly overrepresented in the prison population which increased from 7.7% in 2002 to 13.4% in 2012. Inmates are bullied into converting to Islam due to the growing power of Muslim gangs.
• Sharia courts are already practicing within some mosques, creating a parallel legal system that is contrary to UK law. ‘Muslim Patrol’ tried to implement Sharia law by harassing members of the public in East London.
• The Salman Rushdie ‘Satanic Verses’ controversy in the 1980s gave us an early indication of hair-trigger mass rioting. Since then we have seen ugly demonstrations regarding the Danish printing of Muhammad cartoons and banning of people like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from entering the UK due to fears of Muslim violence, (and their support of Israel was a factor as well).

Islamisation is at full-throttle across Western Europe as Soeren Kern describes in his articles about the past year alone in France and Belgium and the Netherlands. In Britain, the Muslim takeover is now gathering momentum, and we are projected to witness Islam becoming the most practiced religion within twenty years.
We are all told to ‘celebrate’ this enforced diversity, or ‘super diversity’ as it has become known, thanks in no small part to Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ flooding the country with immigrants. Our politicians and media, the ‘useful idiots’, paralysed by political correctness and their
own liberal agendas and self-interests, never gave a thought to our own culture and mislead the public into thinking that Islam is harmless and is not here to take over.
The Equality Act 2010 has made Islam equal to the host culture that it both despises and is in
conflict with, and later this year Islam will be taught to all UK schoolchildren. However the content will no doubt paint an inaccurate picture of ‘normalising’ Islam’s existence in Britain and portray Islam as a misunderstood victim and not the ‘vile predator’ that it really is. Thus indoctrinating impressionable future generations into gullibly thinking Islam is a part of Britain and is peaceful like all other religions, just as the Islamist MCB wants.
What the Islamic Future Has in Store
Current trends of unneeded immigration and higher Muslim birth rates will see more mosques being built, more knee jerk reactions and demands made by Muslims, more political correctness forced upon non-Muslims, an increase of terrorism plots and attacks, increasing friction with non-Muslims (especially where the Muslim population expands), more halal, more hate preachers, more Muslim cries of ‘Islamophobia’ and a never ending cycle of Muslims playing the victim, etc.
We have already witnessed Muslims organising themselves politically in places like Tower Hamlets. As a result, there have been instances of electoral fraud in places like Birmingham, and there are current concerns in numerous towns and cities in the UK of more fraud from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. With some of this fraud coming from inside mosques it also demonstrates how Islam is entwined with politics. The danger to the non-Muslim population is that politicians can chase the Muslim bloc vote, because this can change the course of elections, as it did in the example of François Hollande’s Socialist Party receiving up to 93% of Muslim votes in the 2012 French election.
The whole situation could be likened to a runaway train, or perhaps that is being too generous because it is a train wreck already. Brits do not just have to contend with uncontrolled Muslim immigration but also, without a mandate, the total capitulation to the EU super state and open borders with nearly 30 other European countries. Douglas Murray pointed out: “But what levels, after all’s said and done, do the celebrants of diversity want to get to? What is their ideal target figure? Is a ceiling of 25 per cent white Britons in London — or the country at large — optimal? Or would it be 10 per cent? Or none at all?”
The end result is 620,000 white British left London in the space of one decade because it no longer feels like home. In Birmingham “less than a third of pupils schools are now white, with Asian students making up almost half of the total classroom population.” Some areas of the UK are so colonised that entire schools have no white British pupils and it is projected on current trends that indigenous Brits will be a minority throughout the UK in roughly half a century’s time.
Whether the advice of Anjem Choudary encouraging ‘more babies so that Muslims can take over the UK’, to the so-called ‘moderate’ Mo Ansar relaying the same message, is heeded, the facts cannot be ignored.
Whatever happens, liberals are currently content with having needlessly transformed harmonious, Islam-free Britain of around sixty years ago, to now having nearly 10% of babies being Muslim. Will  future liberals be happy when we arrive at 30-40% Muslim? By then liberals may have realised their stupidity, but it’s doubtful that anyone will be held accountable, and most importantly, the nation’s fate will have long been sealed.

HONEST REPORTING: The Untold Truth: 150 Million Europeans Hate Israel

In a thought-provoking new book, Demonizing Israel and the Jews, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, a board member of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, posits that today, well over 150 million Europeans believe that Israel is exterminating the Palestinians. This current widespread demonic view of Israel is a new mutation of the diabolical beliefs about Jews which many held in the Middle Ages, and those promoted more recently by the Nazis and their allies.

This collection of 57 interviews with scholars, politicians, and the like, including HonestReporting’s Managing Editor Simon Plosker, depicts how extensive and intense the hate-mongering is.

In an exclusive two-part interview to coincide with the publication of his book (available for purchase on Amazon), we asked Manfred Gerstenfeld about the important issues raised and why its conclusions appear to have been swept under the carpet by the mainstream media.

HR: In your new book Demonizing Israel and the Jews, you state that more than 150 million adult citizens of the European Union hold a demonic view of Israel and that this resembles the diabolical view many people in the Middle Ages had of Jews. What do you mean by that?

MG: The core element of anti-Semitism for almost two millennia has been that Jews represent “absolute evil.” The notion what absolute evil is, has changed over the centuries. Many Christians falsely claimed that the Jews had killed God’s alleged son – the worst thing imaginable in their minds. For the Nazis, absolute evil was if people were sub-human, vermin, bacteria and so on in their eyes. After the Holocaust, the worst thing possible now is to commit genocide, or to behave like the Nazis did.

HR: What is your book’s statement that more than 150 million EU citizens have a demonic view of Israel based upon?

MG: Various studies asked respondents whether they agree with statements such as, “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians,” or “Israel behaves toward the Palestinians like the Nazis did toward the Jews.” Studies in seven E.U. countries confirm that about 40% or more people there hold such demonic views. Similar studies confirm this for the non-E.U. countries Norway and Switzerland. Several other studies also show strongly negative views of E.U. citizens about Israel.

HR: Most of these studies are not new. Why weren’t  they given prominence much earlier?

MG: One can only guess. Results of these studies should make European leaders and opinion-makers extremely uncomfortable. For instance, the Norwegian Government paid for a 2012 study by the Oslo Holocaust Center. The authors of the study avoided writing that the 38% of Norwegians who believe that Israel behaves like Nazis toward the Palestinians, are extreme anti-Semites. Yet they must have known that having such attitudes is an anti-Semitic act as defined by the European working definition of anti-Semitism.

HR: If these studies are already known, what is new about your book on this issue?

MG: For the first time, these studies which point to the same conclusions are listed together. They back up my estimate that at least 150 million adult citizens of the EU have such a demonic view of Israel. This a clear strong message to convey widely.

HR: Have journalists been in contact with you about this?   

MG: I have been interviewed at length by several European journalists about my book. Some work for newspapers with huge circulations. They have shown great interest in this story and told me that the figures were convincing  I have not seen anything in their papers yet, however.

HR: Why do you think that is?

MG: My publisher, Rene van Praag of RVP Publishers says that just as many stories are too small for leading newspapers, a few are ‘too big’.

HR: What does a ‘too big story mean” in this case?

MG: Once it becomes widely known that out of 400 million adult E.U citizens, 150 million have demonic anti-Semitic views, the possible consequences for the EU’s image, its politics and its need to act, cannot be ignored. The EU presents itself as a “model of democracy and promoter of human rights.” From the 150 million number of citizens with demonic views of Israel and the book’s interviews, it also emerges as a conglomeration of anti-Israel hate-mongering and a widespread criminal worldview. In the 1930’s European countries had huge number of citizens with a criminal worldview of the Jews. In view of the Holocaust thereafter and other atrocities this similarity pulls the bottom out of the image of a humanitarian Europe.

HR: Are there other possible consequences?

MG: It may for instance become difficult for the EU to avoid investigating who has contributed to creating this criminal worldview? That should lead to explosive results. One will for instance, have to point at leading EU and national politicians in various countries. This would not only be a further assault on the EU’s contrived humanitarian image, but also on some countries and political parties. These European hate-mongers do not necessarily believe themselves that Israel exterminates the Palestinians, or behaves like the Nazis. Their biased statements however, all contribute to this image. This is the method of “the thousands cuts.” On an individual basis, none of these attacks has caused the dramatic results the studies show. However, together they have created them.

HR: What else has contributed to Europe’s criminal worldview of Israel?

MG: Another element is the trivialization and partly hiding of major horrific events in the European countries’ own past. In this way, a far too rosy picture of Europe’s own history is painted. This is then compared to the greatly falsified picture of Israel.

Very important is also the far too little attention given to the widespread criminality and hate-mongering in large parts of Palestinian society and many Arabic and Muslim states. If mass murders, terror attacks and other major crimes there were highlighted proportionally to the size of the population and misconduct in those countries, news about Israel would be comparatively negligible. Looking away from major crimes in the Muslim world is an example of what we might callhumanitarian racism. Many people ignore the crimes of colored people because they are perceived as weak. Such racists often falsely claim that they belong in the anti-racist camp.   

HR: Any other possible considerations concerning the findings of your book?               

MG: Another major one is that the widespread European criminal worldview of the 1930’s was the precursor to major crimes committed in Europe in the 1940’s. It raises the question – what could the current criminal worldview lead to? Will it again lead to major European crimes, this time against Israel? Or will Europeans be criminal bystanders when many in Muslim countries will want to commit extreme crimes against Israel? My book thus exposes a potentially huge story.

ISRAEL MATZAV: Geert Wilders on Europe: Israel is the litmus proof

Dutch politician Geert Wilders spoke in Los Angeles on Sunday and gave a brilliant speech about the future of Europe. You can find the full speechhere. I'd like to share one part of it with you (Hat Tip: Herb G). 

In the coming weeks and months, I will try to see as many patriot leaders in Europe as possible. And I always ask them for their views on Israel. Because Israel is the litmus proof.

The Jewish people did exactly the opposite of what the Europeans did after the Second World War. They drew the right conclusion. They realized that without a nation-state of their own there could be no safety for their people.

Without a nation-state, without self-governance, without self-determination there can be no security for a people nor preservation of its identity. This was the insight that led the Zionists to strive for the re-establishment of the state of Israel. Theodore Herzl said that there had to be a Jewish state in order to ensure – I quote – "a new blossoming of the Jewish spirit." – end of quote.

Indeed, a soul needs a body. The spirit of a people cannot flourish outside the body of the nation-state. The nation-state is the political body in which we live. We must preserve and cherish it. So that we can pass on to our children our national identity, our democracy, our liberty.

My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe. The Europeans need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state.

And that, my dear friends, is why every patriot, apart from being a democrat, by definition also has to be a true friend of Israel. A patriot cannot be anti-Semitic.

My friends, the great Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky said about the Jewish people: "We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. We do not have to account to anybody. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to." – end of quote.

... 

Let us emphasize this commitment to the resurgence of our national pride with a symbolic gesture. Let us do so by endorsing the Jewish nation-state and move the embassies of our countries from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Let us fly the flags of all the free and proud nations of the world over embassies in Jerusalem, the only true capital of Israel and the cradle of our Judeo-Christian civilization.

Israel deserves our support. Not only because it is the frontline against the totalitarian threat of Islam, but also because it shows how important it is for a people to have its own homeland.

Wisdom from among the nations....

Near Dutch ‘Sharia triangle,’ a small Jewish enclave enduresIn the Van Ostade Housing Project, residents are so intimidated by their Muslim neighbors that they hide kipot and hang mezuzas indoors

THE HAGUE (JTA) — On a cold winter night in 2008, Wim Kortenoeven was startled by the crackling of a large fire raging near his home on the edge of this city’s last remaining Jewish enclave.

Rushing from his apartment, Kortenoeven walked 70 yards and crossed the line separating his Jewish-owned housing project from the predominantly Muslim borough containing what Dutch media have taken to calling the “Sharia triangle” — Sharia referring to Islamic law.

Fearing explosions, Kortenoeven shouted to the people looking down from their balconies to go back inside, but his intervention was ignored.On the seam line, he encountered dozens of Dutch Moroccans looking at several parked cars that vandals had set on fire.

“Onlookers started closing in on me, shoving me, asking if I was police, what I was doing in ‘their neighborhood,’” he said. Kortenoeven scuffled with one man but managed to get away.

Kortenoeven has since moved, but about a dozen Jewish households remain in the little-known Jewish enclave known as the Van Ostade Housing Project. The gated community of 200 units built in the 1880s to house poor Jews is surrounded by the Schilderswijk neighborhood — 91 percent of its residents are foreign-born, half of them Moroccan or Turkish.

Earlier this month, Schilderswijk became national news after a Dutch newspaper reported that part of the neighborhood had become a “Sharia triangle” that police dare not enter. The report prompted a high-profile visit from the stridently anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, whose party called this month for a government study of anti-Semitism among Muslim immigrants.

‘This is Holland. Sharia does not apply here’

“It is unacceptable that women in skirts should be harassed here,” Wilders said during his visit. “This is Holland. Sharia does not apply here.”

Dutch police have denied that Schilderswijk has become a lawless territory and insist they have security under control. But the Holland Wilders fears is already a reality for some Jews of Van Ostade.

“You get a lot of stares and comments,” said Jewish resident Iris Tzur, who says it’s not comfortable for a blonde woman in a dress to walk the streets of Schilderswijk.

Pinchas Moelker, an Orthodox Jewish resident, says he hides his yarmulke under a hat and always tucks in the knitted fringes of his prayer shawl. He also installed a low-profile mezuzah that blends into the door frame. Others here have installed mezuzahs inside their doors.

Such concerns aside, the remaining Jews of Van Ostade have no plans to leave, saying they enjoy a sense of togetherness that richer, less immigrant-heavy neighborhoods lack. Moelker hosts weekly Shabbat dinners for his neighbors, “who get so drunk that they zigzag all the way back home.” And Avi Genosar, who served in an elite Israeli army unit before coming to Holland to study, says the area’s high crime levels don’t bother him.

‘Here I can get fresh, cheap vegetables, tahini, olive oil and the other Middle Eastern foods I’m used to’

“Here I can get fresh, cheap vegetables, tahini, olive oil and the other Middle Eastern foods I’m used to,” Genosar says.

Things were much different when the Van Ostade Jewish Housing Project was built by Jewish philanthropists more than a century ago.

In 1880, there were about 6,000 Jews in The Hague, many of them living in penury in the city’s disease-infested slums, according to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. Van Ostade was one of Western Europe’s largest Jewish housing projects, bringing dozens of Jewish families in from the cold and charging them only a nominal rent.

By 1930, the city’s Jewish population had grown to 10,000 and many more families moved to Van Ostade, but even then Jews comprised only 35 percent of the project’s residents. Many Jewish families passed up the subsidized rent, preferring to live near the synagogue about a half-mile away.

During the Holocaust, virtually all of the city’s Jews were deported and murdered. Today, only about 250 self-identified Jews remain. When waves of Muslim immigrants arrived in the 1970s, the old synagogue became a mosque.

Still, Van Ostade remained in Jewish hands, even as the old Jewish neighborhood near the synagogue became the local Chinatown. The project is run by an all-Jewish board that rents out subsidized apartments to low-income tenants. Jewish residents are encouraged to spread the word among their Jewish friends, but there are few takers.

When waves of Muslim immigrants arrived in the 1970s, the old synagogue became a mosque

“The atmosphere in the Jewish neighborhood itself is very nice,” Kortenoeven says. “Everybody greets you hello. The people are good folks. Many of them are educated people, artists, some students. The problem is some elements in the environment around the neighborhood.”

The impact of Muslim immigration can be felt in other ways in Schilderswijk, as well. Earlier this month, De Telegraaf reported that a local school that had been a Jewish institution before the Holocaust shelved plans to install a commemorative plaque for fear it would upset Muslims. Separately, a sign advertising an exhibition about the school’s Jewish history had to be placed inside lest it upset the locals, a co-organizer of the event told De Telegraaf.

Gerard Brasjen, a spokesman for the school’s board, told JTA he was not aware of the sign issue. The plaque placement, he said, had nothing to do with Muslim sensitivities.

“The plan to place it stalled not so much because of the Jewish-Muslim issue but because it’s perhaps not very wise to put up any sort of plaque in the Schilderswijk,” Brasjen said. “It’s no quiet area, you know.”

President of Rome's Jewish Community: Pack your bags - time to consider leaving - 'Aliyah is an insurance policy' for Jews in Rome Despite the fact that the veteran Jewish community of Rome seems to be thriving, its president believes that, due to growing Muslim fundamentalism, the rise of radical political party and economic slowdown, people should consider packing their bags for Israel.

ROME - As local landmarks go, the Great Synagogue of Rome, completed in 1904, is not a particularly ancient building. But littered throughout its prayer and study halls, and the local Jewish community offices on the two upper floors, are priceless pieces of furniture, religious objects and illuminated manuscripts salvaged from dozens of ornate Renaissance-era synagogues throughout Italy, some going back to medieval times. That doesn't mean that the place is a mere museum, though there actually is a Jewish museum on the premises, as well.

Actually, the synagogue on the banks of the Tiber River is a vibrant Jewish center with three daily minyanim (prayer quorums ), hundreds of children coming for Hebrew school and bar-mitzvah lessons, and various committee meetings going on each day. Behind the synagogue wind the alleyways of the old Jewish ghetto, now a main tourist destination, with its kosher restaurants, and food and Judaica shops.

On the surface, the Jewish community of Rome - the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world and 15,000 strong today - is thriving, but its president, Riccardo Pacifici, says this is the moment that Italy's Jews should "start preparing slowly to move to Israel."

Pacifici, 49, denies he is being alarmist. So why is it necessary to consider such a move? He makes a waving motion with his hand: "The graph goes up and down and I think that the best is finished. Now we have a good moment - There is respect of the population for the Jews, there are laws against anti-Semitism, it is not easy to talk against the Jews today in Europe. So now it is important to make the decision in a good moment."

How long will this moment last? Pacifici says he is certain that "in 10 or 20 years, the demographics will have changed in Europe. The character of the Continent, which is Judeo-Christian, will have changed."

Meanwhile, an evil wind of immigrant-hatred is sweeping Europe, and Pacifici is adamant that his community not join the xenophobic chorus. "As Jews," he insists, "because of our historic memory, we must support the integration of immigrants into Italy and into all Europe, and the human rights of people who were born in countries where they did not have a chance or any hope to emigrate here. We have to do everything to support these people. But their sentiment is not positive toward Jews and Christians."

Pacifici sees the combination of increased immigration, rising racism and fascism, and the deep recession in which Italy and other European nations find themselves to be part of an inexorable process.

"Of course, not all the immigrants are Muslim and not all the Muslims are fundamentalist," he says. "But when they come here looking for a future and for work, they become disillusioned very quickly because, with the financial situation as it is, there are no jobs. And then they become very vulnerable to fundamentalism."

While the demographics of the growing Muslim population in Europe have long been a worry for some Jewish leaders, others claim that only a tiny minority of Muslim immigrants are interested in anything but building new lives for their families. For his part, Pacifici sees the newcomers as a threat only when they join forces with local elements: "Muslim fundamentalism joins in with the racists and the fascists and the anarchists we have here, who don't like Jews and don't like Israel. They are unwilling to accept the fact that you can be both an Italian Jew and support Israel at the same time."

Meanwhile, there is an even more immediate challenge to Italian Jews' peace of mind: the rise of the Five Star Movement, the new and rather anarchic party that captured around one-quarter of the votes in last month's general election in Italy. The party is headed by stand-up comedian Giuseppe "Beppe" Grillo, a man who has made anti-Semitic comments in the past and is exhibiting worrisome fascist tendencies.

"Some people think Grillo is just a clown," Pacifici explains. "In Germany, they say he is just like [former Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi. But Grillo says that political parties are not important, and that is exactly what Hitler was saying before he came to power. Grillo's party is more dangerous than the fascists because they have no clear platform - we do not know what their limits are. We don't know most [of the] people who are in the movement, but we do know that there are extremists from both left and right there − fascists and radicals − and they are together against the constitution, together against democracy.”

What worries Pacifici is that the political establishment in Italy has not ostracized Grillo and his like-minded colleagues. A few weeks ago, the party’s parliamentary leader, Roberta Lombardi, said that some elements of the ideology of Italy’s pre-World War II fascism were positive.

“When Berlusconi said something similar a few months ago, everyone criticized him,” recalls Pacifici, who believes that Berlusconi was the best leader in terms of the interests of the local Jewish community, and Italy’s ties with Israel. “But when Lombardi said [what she said], only one member of parliament [who happens to be Jewish] criticized her. The Democratic Party [Italy’s main left-wing party] were afraid to criticize because they want Grillo to support them in government. If our historic friends in the Italian parliament do not object when they hear people talking about fascism, then it flashes a red light.”

Avoiding criticism

Until now, local Jewish leaders ‏(and Israel’s Foreign Ministry‏) have refrained from openly criticizing Grillo and his views, preferring not to make them a political issue or to alienate his millions of voters. But Pacifici believes that this silence has to end. He does not believe that 25 percent of all Italians are anti-Semitic.

Pacifici: “Ninety-five percent of Five Star voters do not share Grillo’s views on Jews and Israel, but they voted for him because they wanted change. Even my police bodyguard voted for them and this is someone who lives with me and my family, and I know he has nothing against us, but he wants change like everyone else.”
The communal leader has little doubt that his fellow Jews should move to Israel, rather than to somewhere anywhere else in Continental Europe, where similar dynamics are evident.

“For us aliyah is an insurance policy,” says Pacifici. “A lot of our people find that there is a better life for their families there, that Israel is our future. In the last six months alone, 150 Roman Jews moved to Israel. This is up from last year, when only 120 emigrated in the whole year. And we are shrinking demographically anyway, with more Jews dying each year in Italy than being born.”

But despite the various challenges and demographic trends, not all Italian Jewish leaders agree with Pacifici’s dire predictions and call to leave.
“People don’t understand this in my community. In 1938 in Italy, when they passed racist laws, they also didn’t want to understand. But we have to realize that if people in Italy do not have money and jobs, they will not want to have democracy either,” Pacifici explains. “That is why 25 percent voted for Five Stars. I have a responsibility to tell my community that they have to start slowly preparing. I said this for the first time last year after the murders of Jews in Toulouse” ‏(a reference to the killing of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school there‏).

Still, at the same time, Pacifici and the rest of the community’s leadership, is working on securing the Jews’ future in Italy, should they decide to stay. This includes a drive to boost Rome’s Jewish school, which has over 1,000 students, and local youth organizations. The community is also formulating a plan to engage with at least some of the newly elected members of the new Five Stars Movement.

“We are now starting a political project to study this party,” he says, “to understand who its members are and which of them we can deal with.”
One encouraging recent development, he notes, was the election of Pope Francis in the Vatican last week. The leaders of Rome’s Jewish community have already heard of the very favorable impressions of the former Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio from their counterparts in Buenos Aires.

“The Rome [Jewish] community was the last in Europe [that was] forced to live in a ghetto, until 1870,” Pacifici sums up. “For many centuries, we had very bad relations with the Vatican, but now we have good cooperation, and we work together to help integrate immigrants. Only by working together can we keep the Jewish-Christian identity of Europe.”

The Islamization of France (Islam vs. Europe) - Paris goes Third World

Renovations of the Eifel Tower are completed

Christmas in Eurabia and the IDF fights the real threat

Belgian Jews in Shock over Beating of 13-Year-old Girl

Five Muslim Moroccan girls in Belgium beat a 13-year-old classmate, called her a "dirty Jew” and told her to "return your country.”

The girl, Oceane Sluijzer, has filed a complaint with police after the anti-Semitic attack at a sports training center. The attackers were identified and questioned by police.

Jewish legislator Viviane Teitelbaum of Brussels denounced the "silence" of political leaders and most of media after this attack.

Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations of Belgium (CCOJB), the umbrella group of Jewish organizations in Belgium, expressed "shock" at the attack and asked that the investigation be conducted without delay. The Jewish group added it is considering filing a civil suit and said the Jewish community is “exasperated” by repeated attacks on Jews, 40,000 of whom live in Belgium.

It also told the Belgian French community's Education Minister he should "introduce appropriate educational programs in schools to prevent unjustified tensions between communities,” the European Jewish Press reported.

The Jewish Consistory, the representative body of Jewish religious congregations in the country, also appealed to authorities to take action.

SERAPHIC SECRET: Europe’s Suicide via Islam

Here’s a brilliant essay by Bat Ye’or on the Islamization of Europe, a self-inflicted wound growing out of Europe’s willfull ignorance of imperialist Islamic theology, the abandonment of Christianity, and a craven dhimmitude to petro-rich genocidal-yearning Islamist fascists.

Originally published by the New English Review, I’m posting the entire article because it’s that important.

In January 1981 the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Summit meeting in Mecca declared that, “Palestine should be viewed as the paramount issue of Muslim nations.” Since then Europe hastened to adopt this path as well and has provided for the Palestinization of the cultural, social and above all political life of Europe.

For three decades, Europe obeyed the OIC in a servile manner. The EU has effectively created a major problem for itself that is eating away and destroying it. The EU made Palestine the hub of its international policy, transforming it into a symbol of peace and universal harmony, in a world that would not know “justice” until its coming. The only obstacle to this paradise is the Machiavellian Israel, the oppressor and usurper of Palestine, whose purity as a peaceful victim is the harbinger of global justice.

Europe does not yet dare use armed force against Israel, whose existence it claims to defend, while advising it to commit suicide. Europe fights Israel with the infamous Nazi weapons by delegitimizing its existence, robbing it of its history, defaming it by propaganda, hatred and attempts to destroy its economy through boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Toward this goal it encourages an international campaign of incitement to hatred by financing anti-Israel NGOs and lobbies. Europe claims that Jewish existence in its ancestral homeland, Judea and Samaria, is an “occupation” - a colonization. In this way,Israel has become a state that is occupying its own historical homeland. In Orwellian language propagandists speak of “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land” that is called Judea, and not of the ethnic and religious cleansing of Jews from their homeland through wars, expulsions, dispossession and the dehumanizing apartheid rule of dhimmitude. Euro-jihadists invoke “Palestinian resistance” rather than the reality of their terrorism that has spread throughout the planet. The EU has used every stratagem to force Israel to self-destruct in the name of Palestine. That destruction would lead to an era of “justice and peace” in the world in the same way the charnel houses of Auschwitz were meant to purify humanity from Jews.

Read More »

French TV: The situation for Jews in Sweden and Europe today

French Suburbs Becoming 'Separate Islamic Societies'

France's decrepit city suburbs are becoming 'separate Islamic societies' cut off from the state, according to a major new study that examines the spread of Islam in France.

Muslim immigrants are increasingly rejecting French values and identity and instead are immersing themselves in Islam, according to the report, which also warns that Islamic Sharia law is rapidly displacing French civil law in many parts of suburban Paris.

The 2,200-page report, "Banlieue de la République" (Suburbs of the Republic), is the result of a one-year research effort into the four "i's" that comprise the heart of the debate over French national identity: Islam, immigration, identity and insecurity.

The report was commissioned by the influential French think tank L'Institut Montaigne, and directed by Gilles Kepel, a well-known political scientist and specialist in the Muslim world, together with five other French researchers.

The authors of the report show that France, which has between five and six million Muslims (France has the largest Muslim population in European Union), is on the brink of a major social explosion because of the failure of Muslims to integrate into French society.

The report also shows how the problem is being exacerbated by radical Muslim leaders who are promoting the social marginalization of Muslim immigrants in order to create a parallel Muslim society in France that is ruled by Sharia law.

The research was primarily carried out in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two suburbs in north-eastern Paris that were ground zero for Muslim riots in 2005. Clichy and Montfermeil form part of the district of Seine-Saint-Denis, which has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in France.

Seine-Saint-Denis, which the report describes as a "wasteland of de-industrialization," is home to more than 600,000 Muslims (primarily from North and West Africa) out of a total population of 1.4 million.

"In some areas, a third of the population of the town does not hold French nationality, and many residents are drawn to an Islamic identity," the report says.

The study says that Muslim religious institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the state and the French Republic, which has a strong secular tradition.

For example, French schools, which are rigorously non-religious, have traditionally been seen as having the role of training and socializing young citizens in the secular values of the French Republic. However, many Muslim pupils refuse to integrate and often boycott school dinners if the food is not halal [religiously permitted in Islam], the report says.

The survey also points to differing social attitudes when it comes to marriage, for example. The report says that although most people in France do not object to mixed marriages, "in the suburbs we were surprised to find a very large proportion of Muslim respondents who said they were opposed to marriages with non-Muslims."

The researchers also looked into the reasons behind the 2005 riots, which they said had called into question modern France's founding myth, namely "the implicit shared belief that the nation was always able to integrate people."

Islamic values are replacing those of a French Republic which has failed to deliver on its promise of "equality," the report says, and the residents of the suburbs increasingly do not see themselves as French.

But the report adds that the French state is not primarily to blame for this and that many Muslim immigrants simply do not want to integrate into French society.

Although resentment in the poor suburbs has social roots (primarily a lack of jobs), the report says the rioters expressed frustration in a vocabulary that is "borrowed from Islam's semantic register."

The report points out that the suburbs of Clichy and Montfermeil have been at the center of one of France's biggest urban renewal projects. Many physical barriers to integration have been removed, and efforts have been made to plug the area into public transport networks and improve public safety.

Nevertheless, low educational achievement is endemic among the Muslim population. This, in turn, is turning France into a "divided nation." Most Muslim youth are "not employable." More than 20% of the residents of Clichy and Montfermeil leave school without a diploma (about 150,000 people per year), according to the report. The unemployment rate for Muslim youth in the suburbs of Paris is around 43%.

These drop-outs enter a cycle of social exclusion negatively shapes their lives and those of their children. Many Muslim youth turn to "deviant behaviors across the range of incivilities in a parallel economy in which drug trafficking is the most prominent."

"One is struck by the high birth rates among newly arrived families from the African Sahel. The mothers work long hours and their young children are under-supervised by the education system, thus threatening their social integration," the report says.

Islam is filling the void. The authors of the study are taken aback at the explosion of the halal market in France in recent years and also point out that the term halal has been greatly expanded in its definition. The survey question "do you respect the halal?" highlights the "complexity of different meanings of the word, which in its most restrictive sense means only the dimension of the forbidden food, but may also include a code of conduct, standards and an expression of dominant values, separating the 'halal' from 'haram,' the lawful or unlawful in many aspects of society."

The report also describes a proliferation of mosques and prayer rooms in the suburbs. The religious orientations of the mosques are heavily influenced by the national origin of the founder or president of a given mosque.

Islam in Clichy-Montfermeil is structured around two major poles: one pole involves the Tabligh ("spreading of Islam") movement which is focused on "re-socializing" Muslims on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder.

The Tabligh movement arrived in Clichy-Montfermeil in the 1980s in the midst of mass unemployment and drugs. Tabligh preachers built their social legitimacy by providing a moral regeneration of young people in distress around a rigorous practice of the precepts of Islam.

The other pole revolves around the figure of the Tunisian imam Dhaou Meskine, who was involved in the launch ofUnion of Islamic Organizations in France (UIOF). The UOIF, which represents the majority of the 2,100 registered mosques in France, is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which aims to extend Islamic law throughout France.

Meskine also participated in the formation of the Union of Muslim Associations (UAM93), a Muslim lobby group that aims to mobilize Muslims to elect candidates in local elections around Islamic issues. UAM93 has been pushing for the construction of a mega-mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis, although that project has run into difficulties due to a power struggle between Algerian, Moroccan and Turkish immigrants.

The report describes a "new sociology of Muslim believers" that is composed mainly of undereducated low-income immigrants who depend on financial support from Morocco or Turkey, countries that are pursuing their own objectives in France.

The authors of the study also point to a contradiction among Muslims who live in the suburbs: they do not want the French state to interfere in matters relating to Islam, but they also expect the state to improve their lot in life.

The report closes with a warning: "France's future depends on its ability to re-integrate the suburbs into the national project."

Europe's Underestimated Islamists

In early 1959, a small West German intelligence operation stumbled over a sensational find: U.S. collusion with the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the West German sources—two ex-Wehrmacht soldiers who were in Washington's pay but still felt loyalty to their old German bosses—Washington was supporting one of the Brotherhood's top men, the Geneva-based Said Ramadan, son-in-law of the movement's founder Hassan al-Banna, in the hope of using him in the global battle against communism. The U.S. double-agents wanted to know if the West Germans would also help support Ramadan.

Bonn's response was an unequivocal "no": not because of ethical qualms about doing business with the Brotherhood but because of practical considerations. "Ramadan doesn't possess the slightest influence in the Orient," read an evaluation by the head of the West German intelligence operation, Gerhard von Mende. "A connection with him would only yield negative consequences."[1]

Von Mende was neither the first nor the last to have underestimated the Brotherhood or its leaders. In its 83-year history, the movement has time and again been written off as out of date, broken, or otherwise a non-force. Most recently, Western analysts of the Middle East upheavals were quick to portray the Brotherhood as out of touch and, basically, inept. U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper reduced it to a "largely secular" movement[2] while anthropologist Scott Atran argued that its "failure to support the initial uprising in Cairo on Jan. 25 [2011] has made it marginal to the spirit of revolt now spreading across the Arab world."[3] News pages had similar coverage with the Brotherhood's absence in some Cairo neighborhoods seen as indicative of its declining importance.[4]

Of course, as is now known, the Brotherhood played a leading role in the Egyptian uprising and its wake.[5] This should have come as no surprise. For all its flaws, mistakes, and disastrous decisions, the Brotherhood is one of the most resilient organizations in modern history. Its longevity is due to one of its defining characteristics: an almost intuitive ability to assume new forms while pursuing its ultimate goals and carving out niches of influence. In its eagerness to write off the Brotherhood, the West has shown a distinct lack of attentiveness to the group, leading to decades of blunders.

Nowhere has this phenomenon been more starkly demonstrated than in Europe. For half-a-century—unlike in the Arab world—the Brotherhood has been able to grow without any restrictions, going from a one-man operation centered around Ramadan to being the continent's foremost Islamist force. How this happened illustrates the Islamist movement's potency and hints at ways it can be dealt with today. A decade after the 9/11 attacks, why is the West still grappling with Islamism, not so much as a force for terrorism—though that risk remains potent—but as an important political force throughout the Middle East and beyond?

Planting the Seeds

Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1954 ban of the Brotherhood forced the group to reorganize abroad. While many of its senior leaders would spend years in Egyptian jails and its top theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, would be executed, the group was fortunate in having two havens where it was able to regroup. One was Saudi Arabia where it laid down deep roots, eventually melding with indigenous Islamist movements to create a powerful and violent challenge to the ruling royal family.[6] The other, less well-known haven was Europe. Ramadan had already been to the continent several times and was studying law at Cologne University. When the Egyptian ban came into effect, he was living in Geneva, which he would make his home until his death forty years later.

This was a period before the great influx of migrant workers was to transform Europe. Muslims were few and far between. Germany, for example, had just two mosques, one in Hamburg and the other in Berlin. But this does not mean that Islam was not on the radar of Western policymakers. The process of decolonization was creating dozens of newly independent states, many of them Muslim. Western intelligence agencies were eager to use covert propaganda to influence these countries for broader, strategic purposes, such as the battle against communism.

West Germany was home to several hundred Muslims (estimates vary with the upper limit around 2,000) who had served in the Wehrmacht and the Nazi SS. They had been former Red Army soldiers who had been captured by the Germans and changed sides, either for fear of death in the horrific German prisoner-of-war camps or because of their belief in the Nazis' promise to liberate their Soviet-ruled homelands. After the war, most were repatriated but some managed to stay on, congregating for various reasons in Munich.[7]

Many of these began working for von Mende, who had spent the war years in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (usually known as the Ostministerium), coordinating Muslim and other Soviet minorities. After the war, he set up a series of quasi-free intelligence operations that have remained unstudied to date, eventually settling on the name "Research Service East Europe" (Forschungsdienst Osteuropa) that was co-financed at various times by the West German Interior Ministry, Foreign Office, External Intelligence Service, and Domestic Intelligence Service. Von Mende tried to rally the Muslims who stayed behind—many of them his oldOstministerium colleagues—in order to achieve West German foreign policy aims, including the long-term recovery of lost German territories east of the Oder-Neisse border. One of his methods for winning over the Muslims was to promise them a mosque in Munich.

Ramadan stepped into this complex situation in 1958. Under von Mende's guidance, the Munich Muslims set up a registered, legal organization to build the mosque,[8] inviting young Arab students for extended stays in the city. Ramadan was thus invited from Geneva to Munich and within a year kicked out von Mende's Muslims and took over the project, using his position as head of the Munich Mosque Construction Commission[9] to traverse the Muslim world with his assistant (and later rival), Ghaleb Himmat.

Ramadan was aided significantly by the Central Intelligence Agency, which allegedly paid for his travel and backed his efforts to take over the mosque. Suspicions by the West German and Swiss intelligence services that he was a CIA operative have never been positively proven, but the archives show an early U.S. fascination with the Brotherhood, one that would recur in the subsequent decades.[10]

Whatever the reasons behind the U.S. support for Ramadan and the Brotherhood, the latter made good use of their European platform. Through dint of hard work and organizational prowess they used the mosque as a springboard to create a European-wide network.[11]

Consolidation and Expansion

An initial effort at forming a framework for Islamism in Europe took place in 1973, just a few months before the Munich mosque opened. Held in London's theater district, the Islamic Cultural Centers and Bodies in Europe was designed to establish a network of like-minded groups. Several dozen activists attended, including Ghaleb Himmat, freshly minted as head of the Islamic Community of Southern Germany—the official name of the Munich mosque. Reflecting Saudi Arabia's efforts to dominate organized Islam, the chairman was a Saudi. Himmat was elected to the governing council, along with Khurshid Ahmad, a leading Pakistani activist. The meeting did not immediately succeed in setting up a European network, but it was a first step.[12]

Four years later, the Brotherhood scored a crucial success. A meeting in the Swiss lakeside resort of Lugano, headed by Himmat and Yusuf Nada, another key person in the mosque, with the participation of prominent activists, notably Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now widely described as the Brotherhood's spiritual leader, initiated the arduous process of rebuilding the organization after the years of Nasserite repression. In Europe, protected by laws and institutions, they were free to set up lasting structures, beginning with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), whose real task was to provide the theoretical underpinnings for the spread of Islamism in the West. In 1978, the group met in Saudi Arabia and decided to relocate IIIT to the United States where it would be headed by Ismail Faruqi, a leading Islamist thinker who had also been in Lugano and who held a teaching post at Temple University in Philadelphia.[13]

Meanwhile, the Islamic Center of Munich continued to grow in importance, and in 1982, changed its name to the Islamic Community of Germany, reflecting its growth across the country. The Islamic Center of Munich was still important but now primarily as the headquarters of a national group that oversaw a chain of mosques and cultural centers. The exact number of these, in the early 1980s, cannot be ascertained, but it had branches in all major West German cities.

Reflecting its international importance, the group continued to add members from abroad, turning membership in the mosque into a badge of honor. Khurshid Ahmad, for example, joined. He had been at the 1973 London meeting and was the most important representative in Europe of Jamaat-e-Islami, the South Asian version of the Muslim Brotherhood. Another key person to join was Issam al-Attar, the charismatic head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Syrian branch, who had moved to Belgium in the early 1960s and settled in the West German city of Aachen in 1968.[14]

Their joining was emblematic of the international Islamist movement's ability to overcome the ethnic divisions that had split Islam. Although men like Himmat, Attar, and Ahmad had their ideological and personal differences, in Europe they had far more in common. From their point of view, they were the vanguard of a new Islamist wave in the West, pioneering minorities in Christian lands. But they had little to do with ordinary Muslims or the mosque they were supposed to be leading; they did not live in Munich, and the mosque was just a vehicle for their struggle. The group's disconnect from West Germany was highlighted by Himmat, who sent in the protocols of the 1982 meeting by registered mail from his villa overlooking Lake Lugano, 250 miles away from Munich.[15]

By the 1990s, an alphabet soup of organizations had stretched across Europe. The Islamic Community of Germany—as the organization based at the mother mosque in Munich—was a founding member of the Brussels-based Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe linking Brotherhood groups in more than twenty countries. Attached to it is the Dublin-based European Council on Fatwa and Research that issues religious opinions to European Muslims. A funding arm, the U.K.-registered Europe Trust, channels money from the Persian Gulf to groups sympathetic to the Brotherhood in Europe, primarily to build mosques. And the European Institute of Human Sciences trains imams at three campuses in France and Wales. All these bodies and organizations are linked to the Brotherhood through interlocking directorates and senior advisors, such as Qaradawi. These groups also receive significant funding from foreign donors such as the Maktoum Foundation.[16]

This frenzy of institution building highlights an important point about the Brotherhood, namely that it is not a religious society with theological goals. It has had one or two important thinkers, but their main point has been simple: The Qur'an should be interpreted in a relatively literal fashion so as to shape every aspect of temporal society. Most of its members, especially the key institution builders and functionaries who run it, have no theological training or knowledge. Many held degrees in engineering, medicine, or law, leading to the sometimes mocking term of "engineer Islam." This personnel mix, however, is ideally suited for institution building. Back in Egypt before it was banned, it imitated 1930s-style fascist parties. The Brotherhood had political parties, newspapers, youth associations, women's groups and a quasi-military wing. In Europe, these diligent functionaries dutifully duplicated much of this structure (minus the military wing). The main difference is that the Brotherhood is operating as a minority religion, so it uses its structures not to Islamize mainstream society—which is an unrealistic task—but to dominate the West's Muslim communities. It aims to shield them from the West's secular and multicultural societies, providing an alternative reality for its members. It also tries to convert other Muslims into "better" Muslims, who follow the Brotherhood's narrow vision of Islam.

This goal is all the more important given the fact that since the abolition of the caliphate (in 1924), the Islamic world has had no overarching religious authority or structure. If a group set up a body and claimed to speak for Muslims, few could challenge it unless a rival group was set up. The Brotherhood, with its organizational prowess, has been quicker and more efficient than other Muslim groups to assert its preeminence in Europe—from Ramadan's pan-European Muslim conference sponsored by the CIA in the 1960s to the pan-European federation today. It is no coincidence that in both cases—and all in between—outsiders have financed the Brotherhood's activities. That is because at its heart, the Brotherhood outside of Egypt is not a mass organization. It is a group of elite organizers who have set up the structures to define Islam in the West. The Islamic Center of Munich and all successor organizations have never numbered more than a few dozen members. These people did not serve Munich's Muslim community—indeed, the Turkish Muslims who by the 1970s made up 90 percent of the city's Muslims were explicitly denied membership. Instead, the leadership was obsessed with setting up structures. In the Cold War, these groups were relatively unimportant. If anyone paid attention to them it was with a view to using them to fight communism. But as they developed, something unexpected happened: Europe, once outside the Muslim world, became central to its future, and the Brotherhood, after years of laborious organizational work, was suddenly poised to lead the charge.

Conduit to Terrorism

The Brotherhood may be influential in Muslim circles, but is it involved in terrorism? The answer to this is, yes, but this is to some extent a moot point. Since 9/11, terrorism has become a far-too-narrow test for Western evaluation of Islamist groups. If they are violent (usually defined in terms of attacks against Western targets), then they are bad; otherwise, they are good. The Brotherhood has managed to slip through relatively unscathed—yet another indication of the underestimation of its real importance.

To illustrate this point, it may be useful to return to the Munich mosque and two of its brushes with terrorism. Mahmud Abouhalima, the man convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, for example, had been a regular at the mosque[17] and had sought spiritual counseling from Ahmad al-Khalifa, then the mosque's chief imam. Khalifa and the center denied any connection with the plot, saying Abouhalima had simply come for spiritual counseling.

There was also the case of Mamduh Mahmud Salim, widely seen as al-Qaeda's finance chief and bin Laden's personal mentor. He was arrested in 1998 in a small town near Munich while on a business trip to Germany. Before being extradited to the United States, he called up Khalifa and asked for spiritual guidance. (He was later put on trial in New York and sentenced to thirty-two years in prison.) Khalifa confirmed to having met both men but described the contacts as being purely humanitarian work.[18]

German intelligence was, nevertheless, alarmed and launched an all-out investigation into Salim's contacts. One, in particular, stood out: Mamun Darkazanli—a Syrian businessman living in Hamburg, who attended a small mosque there called al-Quds. German police bugged Darkazanli's home and observed his contacts at the mosque, including one particular man, Muhammad Atta, but being unsure about the nature of their findings decided to drop the investigation. Two years later, on September 11, 2001, Atta flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, and al-Quds mosque emerged as a place where the hijackers had been radicalized. Darkazanli was never prosecuted, but he was yet another less-than-glorious link between the Islamic Center of Munich and political-religious extremism.[19]

Shocked by the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government swung hard against the Brotherhood. Investigators were especially fascinated by one of Nada's investment vehicles, Banque al-Taqwa. Himmat sat on its board, and seemingly every Islamist in Europe had bought shares in it, making its shareholder list a who's who of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. Nada had set up the bank as one of the first financial institutes to operate in conformity with Islamic law. Instead of offering depositors interest, the bank called its customers investors and offered them profits from money it lent out. But he had invested the money amateurishly—Nada himself says he put most of it in Malaysian businesses shortly before the 1997 Asian financial crisis—and the bank went under. U.S. prosecutors, however, concluded that the bank was a conduit for terrorist money. Washington declared Nada and Himmat terrorist financiers and had the designation endorsed by the United Nations. Both men's bank accounts were frozen.[20]

The Islamic Community of Germany suddenly faced a financial crisis. The community's chief officer, Himmat, signed the group's checks, but now anything he touched was frozen. There was also a painful interview in the Munich mosque's publication al-Islam, in which Khalifa tried to justify why Himmat, who had lived in Lugano for decades, was running the group. After twenty-nine years at the helm, Himmat resigned in early 2002.[21]

But this did nothing to combat terrorism. As the Munich mosque's links to the 9/11 attacks show, the Brotherhood is not so much—at least in terms of Western targets—an active promoter of terrorism. Instead, it creates the milieu from which terrorism arises. Atta did not receive instructions from anyone affiliated with the Munich mosque, but the mosque was part of an Islamist environment with links to Atta. This is why the government's attempts to cripple Nada and Himmat financially were inappropriate. The problem that both men posed was ideological and needed to be countered on this level. Their lack of direct links to terrorism was proven by Washington's inability to prosecute them. Eight years after freezing their accounts, Washington had to acquiesce as they were unfrozen.

This parallels a broader and equally uninformed rapprochement between Western governments and the Brotherhood. By the second term of George W. Bush, efforts were already underway to renew Washington's decades-old links to the group. The State Department organized conferences between the European Brotherhood and American Muslims—who are also in groups descended from that organization.[22] All of this was backed by CIA analyses, with one arguing that the Brotherhood featured "impressive internal dynamism, organization, and media savvy."[23] Ignoring warnings from Western allies against supporting the Brotherhood in Europe, the CIA pushed for cooperation. This policy has continued under the Obama administration.

Conclusion

Why the enduring interest in the Brotherhood? Since its founding in 1928, the movement has managed to voice the aspirations of the Middle East's downtrodden and often confused middle class. Although it has many adherents at the lowest-rungs of society, it is run and organized by educated professionals. An organization run by such people and appealing to the masses is naturally intriguing to Western policymakers eager to influence this strategic part of the world.

But how the Brotherhood achieves its appeal makes it a dubious partner. Most Muslim societies have lived through more than a century of oppression by corrupt and brutal elites, and Islamists have invariably presented the establishment of religious rule as the only road to a more just society. In truth, however, the Brotherhood has offered a fundamentally anti-modern, political program and ideology, exalting the small number of "true" Muslims who adhere to a literalist view of the Qur'an and writing off the rest—including most Muslims—as apostates.

Many Brotherhood spokesmen claim it renounces violence, but its chief theoreticians have not been able to bring themselves to do so. Qaradawi, for one, has regularly railed against "Zionists and Jews"—although some analysts claim this is not so serious and that he is actually a moderate (at least in comparison to al-Qaeda). Yet he has explicitly endorsed suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, including children (because they will grow up to be adults), expressing his desire to die as a martyr "at the hands of a non-Muslim."[24]

This means that a decade after 9/11, the West is still unsure how to deal with Islamism. Just as in the 1950s, policymakers tended to either lionize Islamists as potential allies in the struggle against communism or write them off as passé; these two extremes have been much in play in the decade attending the attacks. What is missing is a middle way that treats Islamism for what it is: a potent ideology that is likely to be a threat for the foreseeable future.

Ian Johnson is an author based in Berlin and Beijing who specializes in the intersection of religion and civil society. He was Germany bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and, in 2010, published A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

[1] "Aktennotiz Betr. Besuch von Shamil and Magoma," German Foreign Office Political Archive, Berlin, AA PA ZA 105731, Feb. 3, 1959.
[2] YnetNews (Tel Aviv), Feb. 11, 2011.
[3] Scott Atran, "Egypt's Bumbling Brotherhood," The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2011.
[4] See, for example, The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2011.
[5] Ibid., Mar. 24, 2011.
[6] Stephane Lacroix, Awakening Islam: Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011).
[7] Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia: A Study in Occupation Politics, 2nd ed. (London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1981. p. 540.
[8] "About the Muslim Brotherhood," Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, accessed June 24, 2011.
[9] Ian Johnson, "The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe," briefing before the Congressional Human Relations Caucus, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., Feb. 9, 2006.
[10] Ian Johnson, A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2010).
[11] Lorenzo Vidino, "The Western Brotherhood," The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
[12] Impact International, May 25-June 7, 1973, p. 3.
[13] Muhammad Shafiq, Growth of Islamic Thought in North America: Focus on Ismail Raji al-Faruqi (Brentwood, Mass.: Amana Publications, 1994), p. 27-9.
[14] "Protokoll," Amtsgericht München (Munich district court), Dec. 4, 1982, p. 1.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Author's interview with Ahmad Rawi, former head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, Markfield, U.K., July 21, 2004.
[17] Time Magazine, June 24, 2001.
[18] Al-Islam (Munich), June 2001, pp. 16–8.
[19] Ian Johnson and Alfred Kueppers, "Missed Link," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 19, 2001.
[20] Matthew A. Levitt, "The Role of Charities and NGOs in the Financing of Terrorist Activities," Subcommittee on International Trade and Finance, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2002.
[21] Amtsgericht München, Jan. 13, 2002. Himmat gave the explanation of the frozen accounts in a telephone interview, June 1, 2005.
[22] Tom C. Korologos, U.S. ambassador to Belgium, "Islamist Extremism in Europe," testimony before the Subcommittee on European Affairs, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Apr. 5, 2006.
[23] "Muslim Brotherhood: Pivotal Actor in European Political Islam," Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Md., May 10, 2006.
[24] BBC News, July 7, 2004; Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, Jan. 31, 2011; see, also, "The Qaradawi Fatwas," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 78-80.