Turkey and EU: Can this Marriage be Saved?

When Turkey first applied for full membership in the European Union in 1987, the world was an entirely different place — even the rich club had a different name: the European Economic Community. U.S. President Ronald Reagan had undergone minor surgery; British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term; Macau and Hong Kong were, respectively, Portuguese and British territory; the Berlin Wall was up and running; the demonstrations at the Tiananmen Square were a couple of years away; the Iran-Contra affair was in the headlines; the First Intifada had just begun; and what are today Czech Republic and Slovakia were Czechoslovakia.

The European Union’s Massive Brexit Self-Harming Exercise

As the resumption of the Brexit debate looms in the House of Commons, it is reported that the European Commission is haughtily retaining its refusal to consider any revision to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA); this attitude is also backed by the numerous leaders of European Union countries whom UK PM Theresa May has contacted. Those leaders assume that, like most of them themselves, the UK will eventually grovel before the Commission and accept its dictate.

The Palestinians’ Uncivil War

The Palestinians’ major ruling groups, Fatah and Hamas, are now saying they are done with each other: that the divorce is final.

Recent days and weeks have witnessed the two groups maligning each other beyond anything previously seen. Fatah and Hamas have reached a new level of mutual loathing. At times, it even seems as if Fatah and Hamas hate each other more than they hate Israel.

Apologists for Extremism in the West

As someone who grew up in fundamentalist Muslim countries, the continuing spread in the West of apologists for sharia law is, to say the least, intriguing. It is, of course, good-hearted to wish people from other cultures to feel welcome. Many of these apologists, however, have no first-hand experience of how it feels actually to live in that part of the world or to be a victim of day-by-day radical Islam. What is painful is that although many of these apologists have never lived under Islamist rules, they often act as if they had.

First, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan correctly said, “There is no moderate Islam; Islam is Islam.”

Multiculturalism and the Transformation of Britain in 2018: Part II

July 1. Mubarek Ali, a 35-year-old former ringleader of a Telford child sex abuse gang, was sent back to prison after breaching the terms of his parole. In 2012, Ali was sentenced to 22 years in prison for child prostitution offenses, but was automatically released in 2017 after serving only five years. Telford MP Lucy Allan said there are “many questions to be answered” about why Ali was released, and also about how the justice system treats so-called grooming cases:

Turkey Scolds Europe

At a recent conference in Cologne on the future of Europe’s Muslims, Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, railed against what he called the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… [that] threaten European multiculturalism.”

In his keynote address to the conference, hosted by Turkey’s main Islamic body in Germany, DITIB — based in the Cologne Central Mosque, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated during a visit to Germany in September — Erbaş declared:

America’s Loyal Syrian Kurdish Allies Evade Annihilation

In April 2018, we warned that President Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Syria would be a repetition of President Obama’s worst mistake, the precipitate withdrawal from Iraq that facilitated the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State (ISIS).

We perceived that the immediate consequence of abandoning Syria would be a Turkish-led campaign to annihilate America’s Syrian Kurdish allies, who heroically bore the brunt of defeating the ISIS in Syria and capturing its capital, Raqqa.

The West’s Big-Ticket Power Grabs

It is a strange time to be a citizen in a Western democracy. Our society is based on exchange — we transact in the free market, we share ideas online, and most significantly we give up some of our natural liberty in exchange for a civil society and a vote.

But increasingly, the freedoms supposed to be protected by civil society are being eroded away. At the level of the individual, our freedom of speech is under attack. Criticism of migration is apparently about to become “hate speech” and a prosecutable offence.

Fayçal, du jihad en Syrie à la désillusion

Pour raconter son histoire, Fayçal prend ses précautions. Il n’accepte de parler qu’en-dehors de son quartier, dans un café discret. Le jeune homme n’a pas encore 30 ans. De forte corpulence, il a un visage doux et arbore un sourire gêné. Méfiant, il regarde constamment autour de lui. Après avoir passé plus d’un an en Syrie, il est retourné chez ses parents. Depuis, il ne sort presque plus de chez lui et se sent surveillé en permanence.

Né au sein d’une famille assez aisée de la classe moyenne, Fayçal grandit dans un quartier populaire. Employé dans l’entreprise de ses parents, il est indépendant financièrement et a une vie stable.

Après la révolution, son “entourage” qu’il juge conservateur, l’incite à se tourner vers la religion. Il se met à fréquenter la mosquée du quartier et assiste aux “dourous”, des cours de théologie prodigués par l’imam. Comme dans les médias ou sur les réseaux sociaux, le conflit syrien y est constamment abordé et Fayçal commence à s’y intéresser. “Des femmes, des enfants massacrés, c’est impossible de rester insensible”, se souvient-il. “Beaucoup de jeunes sont partis, persuadés de devoir aider leurs frères sunnites”.