In this single case, the plan of the al-Qaeda terrorists was foiled. Through the self-conscious act of the passengers, a fourth act to strike the heart of America and of the Western world was stopped.

We all sat in front of our TVs and couldn’t comprehend the world anymore. Before that, we believed in the goodness of mankind. After the end of the Cold War and the Fall of the Wall, we had hoped that we could steer in the direction of a better world. We believed that enlightenment and education, the dissemination of such great values as democracy, human rights and freedom of speech, as well as our readiness to provide aid to underdeveloped countries and peoples of the third world would ultimately contribute to all people working together for a better future. One that would be determined by reason, the positive attitudes of unique cultures toward each other, and by optimism.

In just seconds this world view fell apart. The gruesome crimes of former times were again present. A vivid and palpable as before. In this brutal way, we had to recognize that our libertarian values are neither self-evident nor are they invincible. If we intend to keep them, we must stand up and defend them.

Some of us understood this more quickly, others a little more slowly. Meanwhile, we have become many. Perhaps you aren’t totally a part of us, perhaps you are still considering and have questions. Perhaps you will come only tomorrow? or on September 11th?

We will be there.

We, the Citizens’ Initiative Pax Europa (BPE) along with various PI groups and other freedom-loving, Christian as well as humanist groups, will be holding a vigil in many of Germany’s cities in commemoration of the victims of September 11th, 2001,.

You will find us in

- Stuttgart (Rathausplatz from 2.30 p.m.)
- Düsseldorf
- Hamburg
- Koblenz
- Marburg

and in other cities. The precise locations and times will be published on the BPE website.

Please bring a white flower with you.

The Citizens’ Initiative Pax Europa e.V. currently has a membership of around 1,000. The number of the victims on September 11th was around 2,996. Thus, you can see we really need you and your white flower.

» PI v. 11.9.07: Wir gedenken der Opfer des 11. September 2001

(By Ilona / Translation: Anders Denken)

There their deep-seated desires for a caliphate will be satisfied.

Die Welt reports:

The negotiations started at the end of 2005 with Ankara for entry into the EU had ultimately progressed only very slugglishly. The discussions between the Turkish and Israeli government regarding the attack on the “Gaza flotilla” and the refusal by the UN Security Council to renew sanctions against Iran led to tensions between Ankara and Brussels. Therefore, ways are being sought in the EU Commission again to step up the slowing consensus in Turkey for membership.

Therefore the eleventh of 35 chapters in the negotiations for entry are being opened. The theme of this chapter is Food Safety. Whether a food is considered unsafe, if it is ‘haram (‘unclean’ in the sense of Islamic law),’ is definitely to be debated. The further negotiations for EU expansion will take place among the leadership of the council in disintegrating Belgium. Thus there is already experience for upcoming issues.

(Thanks to All Contributors / Translation: Anders Denken)

Nigel Farage’s speech on this theme in the European parliament:

(With friendly permission from BIW-TV)

Previous PI reports about Nigel Farage:

» Farage: After Crash, Not One Bit Quieter
» Verbal Attack on Europe’s President
» Baroness für Europa – Baron für die Briten – English Link here.

» Kopp: Farage meldet sich nach Flugzeugabsturz lautstark zurück

(Many thanks to all contributors / Translation: Anders Denken)

The reiteration of the number “six million” is pure coincidence, if not without symbolic value, especially since the Jews in Israel are practically without exception Holocaust survivors or would have been the “next one up” (if the Allies had not won), or their descendants.

For them Islamists like Iran and Hamas and their nearest satellites have already formulated the next genocide, thanks to Muhammad. Hamas, in their charter, cites Muhammad in the following declaration:

The last day will not come until the Muslims battle so much against the Jews and kill them, that the Jews hide behind trees and rocks. And each tree and rock will say, “Oh Muslim, thou servant of God, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.”

In contrast to the trees and rocks that talk to the genocidal Islamists and to Muslims however, many truistic Jew-haters don’t aim for genocide, rather a more humane solution, namely the execution of a forced eviction for six million Jews, somewhat an intermediate storage facility like a large depot for special waste, thus a Madascar Plan 2.0, or euphemistically speaking a Jewish Disposal Park®.

Helen Thomas (photo above with US President Barack Obama) is one of the advocates of the relatively human idea of Jewish disposal. She is not just anybody or even a Helen Normal Ignoramus, rather the longest member of the White House Press Corps and much more, a group of correspondents that regularly report over the Press Conferences of the US Government in the White House. Thomas has accompanied every president of the United States since John F. Kennedy, and was the first female member of the White House Correspondents’ Association. Helen Thomas has become an institution and famous over the decades. Besides the closing words, “Thank you, Mr. President,” Thomas also regularly opened the press conferences of the US presidents with the first question. In the 1990s, she did a guest appearance in the films “Dave” and “Hello Mr. President.” In 1998, Thomas was the first recipient of the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award named for her by the White House Correspondents’ Association. Today, she is by no means an old demented codger, rather she is indeed a columnist with Hearst, one of the largest media congolmerates worldwide. On February 9, 2009, Thomas was counted among the journalists chosen to be called upon in Barack Obama’s first press conference as president of the United States.

Helen Thomas words it in a brief and folksy fashion, as a current video from the official event at the White House documents: The Jews should get the H— out of Palestine and go back home to Germany and Poland. A little thing to note: “home” is where the last genocide against the illegal Jews was planned and executed.

What a surprise! The Jews in Israel are having a hard time warming up to this proposition.

After the storm of indignation in the US, Helen Thomas has since expressed regrets. In truth, she believes in peace, mutual respect and tolerance, bla, bla, bla…

(Guest contribution by Daniel Katz, Middle-East-Info.org / Translation: Anders Denken)

But this isn’t anything new. In 2007, in the French region Valence, Turkish followers of the Religion of Peace™ violently attacked peaceful Armenians who had been demonstrating against the joining of Turkey in the EU. They shouted: “Our grandfathers have killed you, and we will finish the job.” (from the book by Maurice Vidal: La colère d’un Français (A Frenchman’s Anger).)

What is simply odd, is that Premier Erdogan is of a totally different opinion than that of his fellow compatriots abroad. He vehemently denies the Genocide, and it is, now as ever, a punishable offense if one presents this genocide for what it truly is. Sometimes it is truly difficult for a clearly and logically thinking person to understand the contradictions in the heads of Muhammadins. A further proof that shows we are not integrated.

Perhaps somebody ought to send the video to Heribert Prantl because, in his opinion, the other traditions, ways of thought and experiences enrich us so greatly. By the way, Hitler used the genocide against the Armenians as an example for Shoah (the Holocaust). It must have been an interesting case study.

(By Epistemology / Translation: Anders Denken)

(By the Editrix)

In the course of an email-discussion about American suicidal idiocy that allows Muslims in the military, Gudrun Eussner writes (and I translate):

During WWII, the Americans interned even perfectly loyal Japanese and Germans because of their ancestry. I recently saw a feature about German-Americans who are still fighting for their only too belated rehabilitation.

Did you see that “major” in the shop, clad in djellaba, white cap, the lot? In a shop at a military base!

Thanks, BHO, thanks Dalia Mogahed!

I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal… (Barack Obama)

Only waiters bow at the waist. (George V, 1910 — 1936)

In the mood for another quote?

Five to six million strong, Muslims in America already outnumber Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Mormons, and they are more numerous than Quakers, Unitarians, Seventh-day Adventists, Mennonites, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Scientists, combined. Many demographers say Islam has overtaken Judaism as the country’s second-most commonly practiced religion; others say it is in the passing lane.” (Johan Blank, USNEWS on July 20, 1998)

Below is the video to which Gudrun referred, a convenience store surveillance video. It’s from CNN and shows army major Nidal Hasan about 7 hours before he murdered 13 people:

What happened?

At 11:25 AM, the President addresses the House Democratic Caucus – Cannon House Office Building.

At 2:30 PM, the President makes a statement to the press in which he warned the American public against “jumping to conclusions” over the motives of the shooter. Also, he elaborated on health care – Rose Garden.

At 2:45 PM, the President leaves the White House en route to Camp David where he is supposed to play golf – South Lawn.

God help the US of A. Their President who has — somewhat stumbling — sworn to do so won’t. Notabene that it was political scientist Dr. Gudrun Eussner as well who identified the botched oath as something of greater and more far-reaching consequences, something which Americans, even “conservative” Americans, are either not willing or not able (or both) to concede.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles.

(By the Editrix)

Garmisch-Partenkirchen travel warning

July 3-6: U.S. personnel in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area on the Fourth of July weekend are advised to maintain an elevated situational awareness and increased vigilance in and around areas where U.S. and other military personnel are known to gather, such as restaurants, bars or other venues which coincide with ongoing celebrations.

Background: Authorities are worried that a “German group” might be going to “seek revenge” for an “incident” at a local nightclub. US-citizens are asked by the Munich Consulate General and the German police to, so to say, watch their backs this weekend. A speaker of the Polizeipräsidium Oberbayern-Süd at Rosenheim stated that the situation is “being taken seriously” and that the security measures will be stepped up accordingly.

What had happened? According to information from the magazine “Focus online” and the daily “Münchner Merkur”, the “incident” late in June had in fact been an encounter between a civilian employee of the U.S. Army and a, as the politically correct jargon goes, “German of Turkish origin”. One of the “Germano-Turks” involved was said to have threatened the American to come back within the next couple of days to take revenge.

And that’s why Americans better avoid now one of the most gorgeous holiday resorts in Europe.

(By the Editrix)

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s credentials, mind you, are not just appearing on her head, but on a regular basis in the Al Guardian as well, among them gems of journalist excellence like Let Muslim women speak (“Every man that is held up as an example has a woman by his side … who is exemplary in her own right: Adam with Eve, Rachael with Moses, Mohamed with his wife Khadijah [and several others, among them a child]“) or Beyond the bounds of religion (“Muslims should see Gaza not as a tragedy for the Islamic world, but for all human beings”). Her interpretation of a recent Gallup poll is equally up to any journalistic quality standard:

According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, only half of the UK population identifies itself as very strongly British. And in Germany only 32% of the general public feels that way about being German. Who then identifies most strongly with their nation, reaching a whopping 77% in the UK? Muslims.

Given the country Britain has become, this doesn’t appear entirely improbable. For example with a Justice Secretary (Jack Straw) who had called for a redefinition of Englishness and hinted that the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males” and that the English “propensity for violence” was used to subject Ireland, Scotland and Wales by that “potentially very aggressive” English race.

Picture: Getty Images
Traces of the strong identification of Muslims with Britain in London 2005.

Or with a government that is pressing ahead legislation aimed at criminalising non-PC jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison, with a 10-year-old child having been arrested and brought before a judge for having called an 11-year-old “Paki” and “Bin Laden” in a playground tiff at a primary school already. The other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby, but that was alright. With a Navy, that has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate a satanist crew member. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates, and talking about prisons, those have been quite a while ago already equipped with new toilets so Muslim inmates don’t have to use them while facing Mecca. And, not to forget, with a member of the upper house who gets his voice heard:

When I found out that Geert Wilders was planning to come to Britain and that Baroness Cox and Lord Pearson wanted to show his film, I wrote to the Home Office, the leader of the House of Lords and Black Rod to say that his presence would lead to the incitement of religious and racial hatred, which constitutes a public order offence.

Yes, taking all that into consideration, it is really not all that amazing that “a whopping 77% [of Muslims] in the UK” identify with this — with their — nation.

Proud Brits in full fly: Lord Ahmed demonstrating his strong identification with Britain.

Special thanks to Baron Bodissey, Gates of Vienna, Gaia for coordination, Piggy Infidel for the English translation and Vlad Tepes for the subtitles to the German Video by Pro Köln, as published by us here.

Below is a two-part subtitled version of the movie “Is Pro-Köln Right?”

TRANSCRIPT

Is Pro-Köln right?
The Anti-Islamisation Congress
What the Media and Politicians try to cover up

People of Cologne!

Don’t buy from Jews!

Whoever thought that the time of intolerance and persecution of minorities with all its terrible consequences finally belonged in the past, they had their eyes opened in Cologne on a sunny day in 2008.

(Chanting: Nazis out!)

Gangs of left-wing fascists, encouraged by politicians and the media, took control of the town and, together with the police, suspended the freedoms of speech and association.

This unprecedented atmosphere of harassment and pogrom was clearly aimed at muzzling the small citizens-movement Pro-Köln, to smother its totally legitimate protest against the building of a large mosque.

But what is true is how the peaceful supporters of Pro-Köln were represented as being dangerous, and also what the citizens of this town were under no circumstances going to be allowed to find out.

Unfortunately many citizens of Cologne have no idea at all what Islamisation really means, and the other parties are keen to hide these problems. The mainstream media are also not meeting their obligations to inform.

Even worse, the media promotes the idea that Islam is peaceful and compatible with democracy, but the reality appears different.

Islamic countries are without exception ruled, to a lesser or greater extent, by totalitarian regimes which simply walk all over human rights.

In Sudan a jihad-inspired war of annihilation has been waged for years against the animist and Christian people of the south. 2 million innocent people murdered, approximately 5 million refugees.

The Christians of Iraq are experiencing a wave of terror and unimaginable brutality, fleeing in their tens of thousands. Yet in the neighboring Islamic lands, as “non-believers” they are similarly persecuted and humiliated.

The last Christians in Turkey are also persecuted. Originally they comprised (taken together with other “non-believers”) a majority, these days their total has fallen below one percent, resulting in massacre, persecution and forced Islamization.

Today we find the symbols of Islamic power erected in all former Christian villages. But this isn’t enough to meet the demands for submission from this political-religion. The latest target: the cities of western Europe, among them Cologne.

Most people do not yet realise that even their home town is to be part of the huge Islamic Religious Authority area, the German branch called DITIP, and out of their own beautiful landscape a possible threat that leads to the same fate which befell the formerly idyllic areas from where the Armenians, Syrians and Greeks were driven out by Muslims.

(subtitle on screen: “destroyed Christian villages in Turkey”)

(chanting: We are all Palestinians!)

About 15 million Muslims have settled in western Europe since then, and they are capitalizing on one of the most generous political periods in human history, prosperity paid for by the hard work of previous generations.

The level of unaccountability reached by the policies of the current ruling parties is shown by this example uncovered by Pro-Köln.

Huge numbers of asylum seekers, their applications turned down, are simply not being deported by the current ruling parties. That has to be paid for! That costs the taxpayers millions of Euros, money which could be used for schools, roads, nurseries, and many other sensible uses.

Yet the politicians of the ruling parties do not just stubbornly deny the failure of their multi-culti, separated-from-reality policies, they also make every attempt to portray the courageous democrats from Pro-Köln as right-wing extremists.

text quotes from politicians appearing on screen:

* “Nazi-filth”.
* “Fascists who belong in the toilet”.
* “Pro-Köln reeks of fascist excrement”.
* “Let the fascists drown in the Rhine!”.

Jochem Ott, chairman of the SPD, has stated that we (Pro-Köln) are gathering up Nazi-filth. We are filth. Filth to be trampled underfoot. That is the kind of language which I actually never again want to hear in Germany.

However, just that kind of language was used with ice-cold cynicism before the first Anti-Islamisation Congress and spread with the help of the media. The results could be seen on the 20 Sep 2008. Respectable citizens, who were neither members of Pro-Köln nor any other right-leaning party, were spat on as “Nazi-filth”, punched, and chased through the town, right under the noses of the police.

(chanting: Nazis out!)

Only by fleeing into a hotel were these two, mother and son, able to save themselves from the mob.

At the same time the freedom of movement of thousands of citizens was blocked, as well as that of parliamentarians from Austria, Italy, Belgium and Germany. The Islam-critical rally of Pro-Köln was banned.

We will not be intimidated, we will not lose our right to freedom of opinion.

The main responsibility for the breakdown in law and order lies with Mayor Schramma, whose close relationship with DITIP has since become known.

We will be like our great example Gandhi, totally non-violent, totally legal. The disturbances are the work of the Islamic extremists.

“The peaceful gathering of the Pro-Köln movement should have been made possible and protected by all means necessary” — that is the opinion of Prof. Karl Schachschneider. He states the passive attitude of the police leadership in the face of violent left-wingers was clearly illegal. The weak response of the state towards the violent mob has severely harmed the cohesion of people living together in the town. The sense of protection under the law has been lost.

Information stands from Pro-Köln are almost regularly attacked, helpers beaten up, or even knocked unconscious as in this case.

The police, who are almost always on hand when trying to block the democratic rights of Pro-Köln, have to date not arrested these attackers, who are known.

However they could not silence the voice of democracy.

Fortunately after 20 Sep 2008 we were able to show a huge increase in Pro-Köln membership and interest, even within the established parties, in that the whole campaign of defamation against us and the undemocratic methods used by our opponents has worked in our favour.

The unhealthy cooperation between Islam, politicians and media has succeeded in damaging the rule of law, yet through the strengthening democratic movement the message is becoming audible at last, a message which in Sep 2008 they tried to crush.

Above all we are against the building of this large mosque because of the following: we think it will hold back integration, it strengthens the development of a parallel society, and that make no sense for the cohesion of society.

Too many innocent people have already found out for themselves (by violence) what lies in store in a parallel society.

The stark statistics relating to Muslim men as threatening / potentially violent is shown by this 2003 report from the Berlin Criminal Department.

From a sample of 100,000 citizens, 15,500 had been victims of violence — of these 12,200 had been carried out by proven Muslim attackers, the vast majority, 2,950 attacks had been carried out by non-Muslim foreigners, and just about 350 carried out by Germans.

Politicians who conceal these facts and want to sell us the idea that millions of Muslim immigrants constitute “enrichment”, seem to have lost any sense of responsible behaviour and can not be relied upon to deliver cohesive communities.

The former CDU-member Jorg Uckermann realised this too, and did what was necessary.

There is great disenchantment with politics in Germany; I myself have left the CDU after 20 years.

I have changed over to the Pro-Köln citizens-movement for a new political beginning in Cologne and Germany.

The people’s movement, strengthened through a huge upswell of concerned people, has no intention of putting away its flags and giving in to undemocratic powers.

A renewed invitation goes out to take part in a mass demonstration in Cologne, to draw attention to the enormous danger posed by the Islamisation of Europe.

On the 9th of May, friends from all over Europe are meeting in Cologne, democrats from the whole of Germany, to demonstrate together for our country, against foreign domination, against Islamisation, for our European culture and for our democracy. Come along too, on the 9th of May to the Dom (cathedral) in Cologne.

(By ESW)

Beginning with this op-ed by Michael Fleischhacker from Die Presse:

Schakfeh is acting like the FPÖ

From Mouhanad Khorchide’s study emerges that every fifth Islamic teacher in Austria one way or another has a problem with democracy, and that is alarming. Alarming not only for itself, but also for the Islamic Faith Community which is responsible for the hiring of these teachers. But most disconcerting of all is the reaction of the president of this faith community, Anas Schakfeh.

It is precisely this mixture of false or simulated awareness of the problem, a culture of blame, and a mentality of brushing off those problems, that has been shaping the relationship between the official Austria and the official Islam for years, while out there in real life many problems are continuously accumulating:

* Schakfeh admits, using a slight euphemism, that the results of the study are “definitely not pleasant”. But “similarly unpleasant” is the “scandal-mongering way some media are reacting to the study”, which “the majority of the public” knows about “only in small detail”. What does that mean? The data presented is clear, and it is alarming. Whoever denounces the news coverage as “scandal-mongering” argues that media are constructing a non-existent scandal. This allegation is absurd.

* Anas Schakfeh is also concerned about “the negative stereotyping and fears about Muslims” nourishing “serious ramifications for social problems in Austria”. Is the president of the Islamic Faith Community seriously claiming that it is not the insufficient identification of the Islamic teachers that is a problem for Austrian society, but rather the open discussion about this fact?

* Schakfeh’s comment about the “respect that we have for the freedom of science” and the resulting inability “to interfere in the way those questions were formulated” is almost scandalous. There were some “irritating phrases”, which called for “suggestive answers”, and that “cannot have been the purpose of a well-founded study”. Schakfeh would have asked the following question: “Are democracy and Islam compatible?”, and would have gotten the desired 100% agreement instead of 78%. However, asking a question like that is not representative as every freshman sociologist knows. The president of the Islamic Faith Community is saying that it was a mistake to respect the scientific approach because “well-founded” results can only be guaranteed if the institutional sponsor intervenes in the way questions are asked.

This is unacceptable. It also shows that the official Islam, even if it not legitimized its members, is playing a double game: In the official “Dialogue of Cultures and Religions” there are discussions about the compatibility of Islam and European-democratic culture. But in everyday political life these discussions, even if well-founded, are killed by accusing the bearer of the bad news of hate speech against Islam. The FPÖ reacts in a similar way regarding its proximity to right-wing extremism.

This doubly problematic: It confirms the existing preconception about Austrian Muslims officially professing allegiance to human rights, democracy and the rule of law, while on the inside waiting for the possibility to implement their own visions of Sharia. And it weakens those who have been working on a theological basis on something like a “European Islam”, like the Institute of Islamic Education at the University of Vienna.

Unfortunately, Schakfeh has congenial partners in official Austria for his strategy of actively doing nothing: Chancellor [Werner] Faymann leaves it at saying nothing by saying “We should not discuss new law paragraphs”, while the minister in charge, Claudia Schmied, wants “clear picture about the situation on the ground”. If she is saying that until now she has not had a clear picture of reality, it is perhaps not surprising, but also not very encouraging.

Next, an op-ed by Peter Rabl from Kurier:

Turks refusing integration

The critical discussion about Turkish immigrants is long overdue

It’s good news that integration is becoming a central political issue and that sweet-talking these obvious problems with immigrants has finally come to an end. The bad news is that the awareness gained from this objective approach is that many Turkish immigrants refuse integration and are living in questionable parallel societies.

This discussion about immigration problems, which should not be left to the xenophobic political right-wingers, is long overdue. Problems and facts remain problems and facts even if they are politically abused by people like Strache [FPÖ leader].

Last week a German study revealed that Turkish immigrants have the least interest in integration. The distressing results of this study are also valid for Turks in Austria, especially in Vienna.

In the best case, 75% of second and third-generation Turks are graduates of compulsory education; many leave school without proper language skills and reading abilities. Only 4% graduate from high school. Every third girl stays at home after finishing school. The career plan: Housewife and mother.

This results in an unemployment rate among Turkish immigrants of more than 12%, three times as high as that of indigenous Austrians. With the proportion of Turks who are seeking a full-time job versus those who have one, the situation is even worse.

Wrong immigration policies

What is today an almost unsolvable problem has its roots in the completely failed immigration policies of the past decades. Cheap laborers — illiterates from Anatolia — were hired for the worst and most menial jobs. And under the title of “family reunion” many women and children followed.

Because of their illiteracy, the first generation was unable to encourage its children to seek proper education. Instead, these families secluded themselves in their archaic patriarchal family structures and, increasingly, in Islamic religiosity and in Turkish nationalism.

There are tens of thousands of immigrant Turks who live in a parallel world between mosques and Turkish satellite TV programs in their homes. Their chances of integrating fail because of their own reluctance and their insufficient German language skills, which have been passed on to many small children. Their chances for low-paying jobs, jobs for which they alone are qualified, are sinking rapidly in the wake of the [economic] crisis. A sort of sub-proletariat is now being formed, dependent on welfare payments.

One must start considering whether those unwilling to integrate should be sent back to their home countries, perhaps with the help of financial incentives.

For their own good and that of the host country.

Finally, what may the death-knell for Anas Schakfeh’s public career, from Wien-Heute:

Scandal: Religious education book shows martyr with gun and hand grenade

[See the image at the top of this post]

The news magazine “Profil” reports in its latest issue about a book used in Islamic religious education. This book was edited by the president of the Islamic Faith Community, Anas Schakfeh. The book shows a “martyr” who is dying on the battlefield. The caption reads: “A Muslim who dies in Allah’s path and in defense of his home country is a martyr (shahid). He will be rewarded by Allah with entry into paradise, just as Allah promised in the Quran.” The picture shows a soldier holding a gun and a hand grenade.

This school book is used for third and fourth graders. Says Schakfeh: “I know this looks really bad, but I had simply forgotten about the existence of this picture. But we are currently working on changing these books.” He adds that this picture in no way wants to glorify martyrdom. Martyrs are part of Christian and Islamic culture, and the picture shows the siege of the city of Medina, the first Islamic community.

“A president of a religious faith group whose religion is determined by martyrs holding a gun and hand grenades must resign immediately. We don’t need Islamic religious warriors in Austria and in our schools and school books, “ says Martin Strutz, secretary general of BZÖ.

In addition, Schakfeh’s confession today about a well-known radical Islamist, member of a well-known Islamist party, who was not only a school coordinator, but now also works as a teacher, show that Schakfeh is not a moderate, but a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Commentary from ESW:

Schakfeh is in real trouble. The Green party has now added its weight into the discussion calling for Schakfeh’s resignation. The Greens have always been vocal supporters of anything Muslim. This study, alongside the troubling German study about the lack of integration among Turkish immigrants, is causing the Muslims a lot of heartache. The pressure is increasing. It’s a pleasure watching these events unfold. Taqiyya is failing them!

(By the Editrix)

The official reason given for the decision, made by the municipal board and local church in Lulea, was safety concerns, but Bo Nordin, a clergyman and spokesman for the church, cited the war in Gaza.

“It feels uneasy to have a torchlight procession to remember the victims of the Holocaust at this time,” Nordin told Swedish National Radio. “We have been preoccupied and grief-stricken by the war in Gaza and it would feel just feel odd with a large ceremony about the Holocaust.”

I’m sorry, could you please explain that logic to me again? It would feel wrong to remember the victims of the Nazi genocide because Palestinians died in Gaza last month? Do you mean that it would feel wrong to remember people who were killed because they were Jewish because people who were Jewish killed Gazans?

Would someone kindly tell me again how criticism of Israel is not related to anti-Semitism, because I’m really missing that vital blind spot.

The decision drew fierce criticism from various organizations as well as residents of the city, and a defiant group of Lulea locals has decided to hold the torchlight procession anyway.

Good for you. And hey, Bo Nordin, way to show the compassionate side of Christianity—by being unable to feel sympathy for two disparate groups at the same time. You’re some religious leader, all right.

I will give explaining a try. This is the typical German way of thinking, which has been more or less adapted by the rest of Europe as well. It has to do with the psychological mechanism of self-exculpation that lets every single misdeed by Jews, real or perceived, and by Israel, the über-Jew, somehow magically lessen the German/European guilt of the Holocaust. Therefore every single misdeed by Jews, real or perceived, has to be duly noticed, given its due “importance”, and charged up against the genocide of the European Jews.

This thinking is, too, based on the deeply antisemitic premis that Auschwitz was a reformatory, a premis that has always been an accepted fact for the German-, and now for the European mainstream as well.

It seems that what Israel, the über-Jew, has done in Gaza has finally nullified the Holocaust in the mind of the Nordins of this world. The charging-up has finally come to a satisfactory end. I don’t think that it will remain an isolated case. Watch Roncesvalles and this space for more.

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles!

(By the Editrix)

For years now, the teachings of imams in Germany have been hotly debated.

The vast majority (90 percent) are of Turkish origin, but there are also imams from Morocco and Iran. Frequently, imams speak little or no German, nor are they acquainted with the political, social and cultural norms in Germany. Many politicians — as well as many Muslims living in Germany — are now demanding that this situation change.

Ferid Heider grew up in Berlin and serves as imam at two of the city’s mosques. “Every Muslim can decide for himself who he recognizes as an authority figure,” Heider said.

As a Muslim and an imam, Heider is under no obligation to follow the fatwas issued, for example, at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo — one of the most significant educational institutes in the Islamic world — or any other scholarly community for that matter.

His task, he said, is to do the best he can according to knowledge and his conscience. For him, that means taking the German way of life into account when offering opinions and advice. A fatwa, he stressed, should always refer to a specific case and set of circumstances.

Challenges of life in Germany

Heider said he’s often asked by those in his religious community about which behaviors should be permitted or forbidden for Muslims. Everyday life in Germany is not without conflict for Muslims. Prayer times and working hours often don’t mesh, nudity — whether in parks, gyms or the media — is pervasive, and alcohol is freely available.

The imam listens to people’s problems, and then refers to the Koran and examples from the life of the prophet Mohammed. Based on these sources, he then issues an Islamic legal opinion.

For fatwas issued in Europe, Heider said it’s important to have “Islamic scholars in Europe that have either grown up here or have lived here for a long time.” In his view, only those who are intimately acquainted with the political, social and economic situation of a place can issue adequate fatwas.

Fatwas issued in Germany often vary greatly from those issued in countries with a majority Muslim population. That’s in part due to the nature of a fatwa, says Bettina Graef, an Islamic scholar at Berlin’s Center for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO). A fatwa may be a ruling in an individual case, but its significance is often much larger.

Everything that’s not forbidden is, in principle, allowed,” said Graef. “And so of course people try to push the boundaries.”

Fatwas are of central importance to the Islamic identity, says Graef — an identity that has become particularly important in Europe and the US since the 1990s.

Fatwas imposed from abroad

Many legal scholars in traditional Islamic countries view the new Islamic practice of law in Europe with concern. They’re worried that their brothers in faith are straying too far from the right path, and may be jeopardizing Islam. In order to prevent this, they issue their own fatwas about how Muslims in Europe should lead their lives.

These fatwas may be issued in far-off countries, but they’re nonetheless a source of concern for law professor and expert on Islamic law Mathias Rohe. It’s a worrying development, he said, adding that it has its roots in Saudi Arabia. Imams there have issued opinions demanding that Muslims in Europe hold themselves apart from what is, in their view, a faithless world.

Islam is a religion without a highest authority. There’s no position that is comparable to the Catholic pope. Instead, the faithful can choose from a multitude of voices: the imam from the nearest mosque, scholars at Al-Azhar University, prominent TV sheiks, and superregional fatwa committees. Islamic extremists can just as easily find fatwas to confirm their beliefs as can moderate Muslims who believe in peaceful coexistence with members of other religions.

Islamic organizations representing Muslims in Germany have also attempted to convince their followers to subscribe to a set of basic principles. The variety of opinions and degree of individualism hampers Muslims’ efforts to successfully represent themselves as a group, said Burhan Kesici, the secretary general of the Islamic Council in Germany.

In his view, having some commonality on fatwas is beneficial to the credibility of Islamic spokespeople in Germany and Europe. A common Islamic organization could very well influence the beliefs of individuals, Kesici said. In addition, it would make it possible to exclude Muslims with extremist views.

Does that sound reasonable? Is that a balanced article as it should be expected from a mainstream medium? I don’t think so. Why? Let me first deliver some additional information regarding the experts quoted. It will clarify a lot.

Bettina Graef M.A., who sounds like a convert (or at least like an about-to-be convert) to Islam, a “scholar” of Islamic studies appears to be without the slightest distance to the object of her supposed-to-be scholarly research.

Her recently submitted doctor’s thesis is about “Media-Fatwas by Yusuf al-Qaradawi: Popularisation of the Islamic Understanding of Law. That is the same Al-Qaradawi who, so Graef herself informs us in her own words in an 4 year old article in the leftwing taz

… supports the fight for independence of the Palestinians… initiates solidarity campaigns, collects money and decries at any opportunity the ongoing occupation of Palestine… He goes pretty far here: In an Islamic legal opinion he justifies Palestinian suicide assassinations as a means to the end of self-defense against Israel’s policy.

In the same article, Gr?f describes the object of her scientific research as a “scholar of law” who

… promotes Islam and the rights of Muslims since his boyhood, but speaks up against extremism and violence as well. Al-Qaradawi claims for himself the term “center school of thought”. That means that he equally recognizes and consults all the different Islamic legal traditions.

We can safely assume that promoting the “rights of Muslims” means, as it always does, overriding the rights of people from other cultures, and we are slowly about to get a whiff of where Graef stands.

Mathias Rohe, the other Islam expert quoted in the above article, is of a different calibre than Graef, which makes things worse. A highly qualified scholar of law, he holds a chair for international civil law at the old and respected Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg. His secondary subject was Islamic science, which makes him a sought-after expert on Islamic law and he is, as such, a consultant to the German office for the protection of the constitution (Verfassungsschutz), a rather creepy thought in the light of the fact that Rohe promotes a speedy equal legal treatment of Islam and the Christian faith on the grounds of the same constitution his client is supposed to protect.

Rohe, too, considers the Islamic sharia as law with the same functions as the legal systems of Western societies, namely “to establish a societal order of peace and to coordinate and harmonize the different interests of the people”. Rohe sees no conflict of interests between sharia and Western law. Case in point: An immigrant who brings his four (by Islamic law legal) wifes to this country, has no legal consequences to fear. We are accepting this polygamous marriage already for a considerable time now and German social legislation does indeed provide for all four wives widow’s retirement pension expectancy. Not ONE expectancy divided by four, mind you, but four full ones. Because of that, Rohe argues, it is only logical to accept the rest as well.

The positivism out of the loony bin of Rohe’s argument, that sharia is a good thing worth further promotion because parts of it are already applied, makes the mind boggle. Instead of asking for the abolition of such violation of the rights of the German people and our Western culture, this German (doubtlessly eminently highly qualified) scholar of law states that it ought to be applied even further. Rohe says now that beheadings and amputations are something the “German sharia law” will not allow. How can he know? Because all his nice, moderate, peacefully-minded Muslim friends are telling him so?

If a common organization of all Muslims in Germany and the legal recognition of sharia law really aims, as it is nauseatingly often claimed, to promote moderate Islam by offering an alternative network to that of “militant Islamists”, we don’t need it. A truly moderate Islam would be able to cope with the Western laws, if it can’t, it would be suicidal to allow it. We all know fully assimilated Turks, we even believe that they will never pose a threat to us. But where are they when it is about distancing themselves from Muslim claims, demands and atrocities? Where are the 100%-assimilated Muslims when their brethren rally all-but-peacefully against Israel? That said, where are the GERMANS speaking out against Muslim verbal and physical violence towards Israel? You don’t know? They are marching side by side with them.

Who are the people who are selling us out to the fascistoid, totalitarian and deeply imperialistic Islam? What makes them tick?

(By the Editrix)

Now it expired that it probably wasn’t quite so. In cases like this, it is common (and good) police practice to work from the inside out and family members are usually the first to be investigated. However, the Passau police, we can safely assume overawed by their chief’s involvement, did nothing of that sort. Instead, they began immediately looking for “right-wing extremist suspects”. Arrests that were, as usual in such cases, quickly made, led to nothing. In the meantime, external investigators found discrepancies in Mannichl’s claim and are thinking now in the direction of a relationship-related crime.

First, the police chief – the only witness to the crime – was able to provide only a vague description of his attacker who he said was about 6 feet tall with a round face with a shaved head, the paper said. A neighborhood witness said she’d seen a man with a snake tattooed behind his ear and possibly a cross on his face. But investigators told the paper they can’t find men to fit either description and that the witness’ information may be unreliable.

“When someone with a tattoo like that commits a crime, it’s as if a bank robber put an identification card on his chest and marches into a bank,” one said. “You recognize people like this.”

Meanwhile, police in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic have combed through their records of documented neo-Nazis to no avail.

Another questionable element to Mannichl’s account of the crime is that the knife came from his own home and had been used to cut cake at a neighbour’s party a few days before. But investigators have not yet found traces of cake, foreign DNA or evidence that the stabber was wearing gloves, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

Whatever may be behind the case of Alois Mannichl, it is eerily reminiscent of only too many cases which have one thing in common: the cheap and easy scapegoating of “right wing extremists”. Here are a couple which I remember and which I am quoting from memory and in no specific order:

In June 1997 in the little town of Sebnitz in Saxony, “racist” youths with contacts to the right-wing extremist scene were charged with the drowning of a six-year-old boy in a public swimming pool. The mother had bought witnesses and sold her story to the tabloid shitrag Bild, which painted an amazing picture of 50 sadists torturing the little boy publicly to death. Public “outrage”, “dismay” and “shock” was at an formerly unknown high, supported by the fact that the child’s father was Iraqi, which added “racism” to general nastiness. It expired in the end that the the little guy had suffered from a heart disease, that the mother had let him go swimming nevertheless, attended only by his older sister, and that he had died from heart failure.

A “migration” background generally helps to reach victim status. In December 2002, the 14-year-old daughter of a Cuban immigrant turned up in at a police station in Guben in Brandenburg because “neo-nazis” had cut a swastika to her cheek and called her “nigger”. At first, are we amazed, she was believed. Than it turned out that she had mutilated herself. Neo-nazis had, indeed, in Guben hunted and killed an African immigrant, so that the probability that the claim would receive attention was very high.

1994, in Halle a.d. Saale, a wheelchair-bound girl (a physical handicap generally helps to reach victim status as well) had made a similar claim, just without the “nigger” bit. Thousands rallied against “right-wing violence”. This, too, had turned out to be a lie.

In Mittweida in Saxony, a girl had claimed in 2007 that skinheads had cut a swastika to her hip (!). The 17-year old stated that was because she had tried to protect a little Russian girl they were attacking. Collective outrage and dismay ran rampant, the obligatory candlelight vigils and rallies were duly performed. Then is expired that the girl had made it all up and that the injury was self-inflicted. A “civil courage” award from the “Bündnis für Demokratie und Toleranz” she got in 2008 nevertheless.

We have reported at length about the case of the black immigrant from Africa who had been severely injured in a drunken brawl in Potsdam near Berlin on Easter 2007, a case that had blasted even the scope of former “outrage”- and “dismay”-orgies. The alleged perpetrators, who had been blindfolded, shakled, handcuffed and helicoptered contra legem to the federal persecutor in Karlsruhe although the case was outside his competence, had to be released after a lengthy trial because they had nothing to do with the victim’s fate. They weren’t even neo-nazis. They just had the bad luck to LOOK like “neo-nazis”.

Some of the incidents are still sold as cases of “right-wing extremist violence” in the Internet. People need legends, specifically legends of their own goodness. However, the attitude “they may not have done this, but they deserve what they are getting anyway because they are nazis” is not quite as highly ethical as the proponents would like to see it, and that all this is sold as “civil courage” (which implies by definition that it is dangerous) is sickening beyond belief in its hypocrisy. Those incidents are, pre-debunking, often quoted as “touch-stones for our democracy”, which only proves what our democracy is worth.

By the Editrix

Mannichl, 52, … was stabbed after opening his front door to a bald man who launched into a torrent of abuse, calling him a “left-wing police pig” and declaring “greetings from the national resistance movement” before ramming an 11-centimeter (4.3 inch) blade into his stomach.

Everybody is outraged. Outraged! With all the cheap and foreseeable standard reactions, from a rally of more than 300 people “against far-right violence” on Monday afternoon via the predictable calls “for a crackdown on neo-Nazis and tougher sentences for far-right offenders” to the Bavarian interior minister’s original statement that “the assault showed that far-right violence had reached a new dimension”.

Two men from the right-wing scene were quickly arrested but had to be released soon. No other suspects have been found yet.

The Neo-Nazi party NPD, who was able to clock up a whopping 1.2% at the elections for the Bavarian state parliament last September, issued a statement on its website condemning what they called the “insidious attack on the father of two children” and “Whoever pulled the knife on the Passau police chief has done a major disservice not just to the NPD, but to the entire national resistance movement”, which is true.

Another, equally life-threatening, stabbing last year in Frankfurt (the Editrix reported) caused less concern. The victim was a Rabbi and the perpetrator a 22-year-old unemployed “German of Afghan parentage”. He, too, had delivered the blow together with a message, namely “I’ll kill you, you Scheiß-Jude.” [Expletives are hardly translatable: Scheiß=shit, Jude=Jew]. The perpetrator remained adamant, largely supported by the justice system and the mainstream media, that there had been no antisemitic motive and that he felt threatened by and physically inferior to the middle-aged, grossly obese rabbi, whose fat layers had prevented worse, and had thus reached for his knife. As the journalist Henryk M. Broder put it: “Here we have another case of self-defense, where the provocateur leaps aggressively into the provocatee’s knife as an answer to a friendly “salam aleikum”. In the end, the young man was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for aggravated battery and harassment, the charge of attempted manslaughter had been dropped. The culture-enricher’s lawyers stated that the fact that their client didn’t stab the Rabbi a second time posed an “abandonment of an attempt to commit manslaughter” and that he was just an ebullient young man who was just too fond of “brandishing a knife”.

Will justice be done now? Didn’t the policeman provoke the perpetrator by opening the door to him? How do we know that the perpetrator wasn’t just another ebullient young man who was just a little bit too fond of brandishing his knife? Will the fact that he didn’t hit the policeman a second time seen as an “abandonment of an attempt to commit manslaughter”? I doubt it. Doubt it, simply because police and Inland Security would lose sinecures of enormous proportions would “right-wing extremism” finally granted the marginal importance it has. And, even more important, yacking about “a crackdown on neo-Nazis and tougher sentences for far-right offenders” spreads a feel-good experience no other medium can provide and that’s exactly why this shitty little party will never be banned because what would all the many upright and noble Germans, good democrats all of them, do if they hadn’t that scapegoat anymore, whom to repudiate is so
easy, cheap, effective and absolutely nonhazardous.

What if the neo-Nazis didn’t do it and what if the neo-Nazis weren’t even neo-Nazis: German Feel-Good-Experience Busted.

By the Editrix

An appeal on her behalf was turned down by the Supreme Court on August 4 — the same day Alireza Jamshidi, mullahs’ judiciary spokesman, announced that stoning as a sentence was abolished altogether from the Iranian criminal laws.

Despite much smoke screening by the mullahs’ judiciary regarding the commuting of all such rulings, there has not been any change made in the stoning cases.

In July 2007, the Iranian regime caused international outrage when Jafar Kiani was stoned to death in the northwestern city of Qazvin.

Of course, this has nothing to do with Islam. It is just, once again “abused” by radicals.

(Hat tip: Eurient)

By the Editrix

Let me go farther back first, to October 13, 1977. That day, flight LH 181, the Lufthansa Boeing 737-200 “Landshut” with 91 people on board, several children and five crew members among them, was hijacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists on a trip from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt/Main, an event that marked a new level of terrorist brutality and government response.

The hijacking was the means to the end of freeing eleven Baader-Meinhof/Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) terrorists from prison. Crew and passengers had to fly several sectors to various airports in the Mediterranean and the Middle East under threat of death by guns or explosives. Because Yemeni authorities had blocked Aden airport, captain and first officer, facing the fact of being almost out of fuel, managed to land, in a maneuver of unique aeronautical mastership, the 30 meter long jet safely on a sand strip nearby. At Aden it was, that Captain Jürgen Schumann was forced to kneel down in the aisle, in front of his passengers and the crew, and executed. After the cold-blooded murder of his captain, the first officer had to fly the 737, which had just undergone a gruelling emergency landing, solo to land safely at Mogadishu, Somalia, an airport, that had before, literally and metaphorically, not been on his, a Boeing 737 pilot’s, map. Both men had a military background, Captain Schumann was a former Starfighter pilot, his first officer a former navy pilot. At Mogadishu airport, passengers and crew were forced to undergo an ordeal of almost twenty more hours before an elite unit of German federal police, the GSG 9, finally and successfully raided the plane, killing three of the four terrorists and only hurting one of the hostages. The heads of the Baader-Meinhof gang at Stammheim prison committed suicide only hours later, Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the German employers’ association who had been held hostage by the RAF for the same purpose, was found the next day. He, too, had been murdered — executed.

Lately, more than thirty years after the hijacking of the “Landshut”, it transpired that Christian Klar, a leading member of the “second generation” RAF, will be set free early next year after spending 26 years in prison. Klar, 56, has shown no remorse whatsoever for the nine murders and 11 attempted murders for which he was convicted. In 1985, he was sentenced to five terms of life imprisonment and has served the minimum 26 years required by German law. Judges at Stuttgart court declared that he no longer “posed a threat to society”, an argument that was used to legally underpin the release of other former Baader-Meinhof gang members before.

Relatives of the victims said they were shocked and dismayed by the court’s decision. Joachim Hermann, the Bavarian state’s justice minister, pointed out that Klar had refused to identify those who carried out the gang’s murders. Hermann described the judges’ decision as an “incomprehensible abuse of justice … Christian Klar deserves no sympathy so long as he continues to show none for his victims and their families.” Not many share his views.

Among those who made their opposition to the court decision publicly known, was the then first officer of the “Landshut”, Jürgen Vietor, who had been awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz for his bravery during the hijacking. “Setting Klar free is an insult to all of the RAF’s victims,” he wrote in a letter to German head of state, President Horst Köhler.

The Landshut in Rome. Italy refused to comply with German wishes and let the aircraft take off.

The odyssey of the Landshut

On October 12, 2007, the Frankfurter Rundschau published a remarkable interview performed by Mark Obert with Jürgen Vietor, which I luckily happened to save, as it is now offline. I translate a few excerpts here.

[...]

Are you frequently asked whether you never made the attempt to overpower Mahmud [the leader of the terrorists]

Sometimes.

Do you consider it a reproach?

No, I always tell precisely what happend aboard. One has to understand: We couldn’t risk to antagonize Mahmud. There were 86 passengers we had to bring home safely. Our four hijackers defined themselves as freedom fighters, they weren’t suicide assassinators like those on September 11. Our hijackers had two goals: The freeing of eleven prisoned terrorists, including those in Stammheim [i.e. the Baader-Meinhof gang members]. And they wanted to survive — like we did. Based on this common ground we had to cooperate.

And to cope with the fear of the hijackers?

That too. Mahmud’s fear played a decisive role at one point. Before we touched down at Aden … something happened , which explains Mahmuds later atrocious behavior. He wasn’t able to fasten his seatbelt. He sat there like paralyzed because he was obviously scared to death. Therefore Jürgen [Captain Schumann] and I had to fasten his seatbelt. [Vietor explains earlier in the interview that they had to do that because a dead Mahmud bulleting through the cockpit in case of an emergency would have endangered the entire aircraft.] After touchdown, Yemeni military came to the aircraft straight away and talked to Mahmud, who was still upset. Mahmud then told us: “They are adamant to force us to depart. They have issued an ultimatum.” Imagine the humiliation for Mahmud: First the thing about the seatbelt and now the rejection by those he had considered his friends. South Yemen was at that time a training center for the PLO. [Notabene that the Baader-Meinhof terrorists received training at PLO camps, thus reviving a long-standing tradition of cooperation between Arabs and Germans.]

Did you consider Mahmud’s defeat as dangerous for yourself right from the start?

Mahmud had suffered a loss of face. I understood that he was bound to compensate it sooner or later…

[...]

At that point you have been for two days in the hands of the hijackers already. Did you have a clear picture of Mahmud and the others?

Something like a profile? No. But that they, too, were highly under stress was obvious from the first moment: all the darting around, the shouting and the gun-waving. The first thing Mahmud did was to sport Jürgen Schumann’s captain’s cap. That’s what he wanted to be, Captain Mahmud. After that, one had to assume that he was a psychopath.

Did you anticipate that Mahmud would kill Schumann?

I had to, because Mahmud had in the meantime informed the passengers as well that he was going to hold a revolution tribunal… In Dubai he had selected passengers for execution. Stupefying. Luckily, he didn’t go through with it. But then he became more mistrustful and irritated by the minute because he didn’t know what Schumann [who had left the aircraft under the pretense of inspecting the undercarriage which might have suffered through the landing on the sand strip, but, so it became known later, had gone to the airport building to plead for the people in the "Landshut"] was up to. That was an additional loss of authority on top of the other humiliation. I had a very bad feeling, but what could I do?

Does the question haunt you?

It is a non-starter, really. I don’t know for sure what Jürgen Schumann would have done in my place, but I think he’d done the same. It was the sensible thing to do.

Feelings of guilt can exist in spite of rational decisions.

His death makes me sad.

The hijackers had thrown his dead body out of the aircraft the next day at Mogadishu.

That wasn’t quite so. In fact, they’ve let him down the rear emergency chute.

Is this difference important for you?

It is a little bit less undignified.

Did you know Schumann well?

He was a young pilot, I was young. [Schumann was 37, Vietor 35.] We had first met before takeoff at Mallorca. And during the hijacking there was no opportunity to talk about private matters.

Do you sometimes think of what Jürgen Schumann might have thought on his way back to the plane?

I thought of it a lot, but without result. Now, after the statement of that General [Sheikh Ahmed Mansur, head of the unit that had surrounded the "Landshut" at Aden airport] I see that he must have known what was waiting for him. And so it happened. Exactly between Economy and First Class before everybody’s eyes he had to kneel and Mahmud asked him: “Are you guilty or not guilty?” And Schumann said: “I tried to…” Then Mahmud again: “Are you guilty or not guilty”. And again Schumann tried to explain what happened, but Mahmud didn’t want to know it at all. He murdered the captain to appear as the resolute leader.

Herr Vietor, is it permissible to think that your chance of survival increased because of Schumann’s death because now you’d become indispensable for Mahmud?

One can think that. One can ask as well the basic question why Mahmud murdered the captain and not the first officer.

He almost murdered you as well.

Before Schumann died, I was going to be shot dead twice. First, because I wore a Junghans watch with a “J” on the face and a company logo that looks a bit like the Star of David. Therefore Mahmud thought I was a Jew. The second time, because I was caught calling the Baader-Meinhof group, whom Mahmud intended to free, terrorists instead of freedom fighters. Then there were all the denied clearances to land, the emergency landing in Aden. Five days long it was about nothing but to survive the next hour, not to make any mistake, to keep an eye on the technology… Captain Schumann had just been shot dead when the ancillary unit went out. If one doesn’t pinch off the battery pronto, one needs a new one. I didn’t want to risk that. Therefore I went to the cockpit as fast as possible and had to step over Schumann’s dead body, very carefully, over his legs, his arms, and over his head. Gosh, I couldn’t even mourn — the more as it was me who had to fly the aircraft now. Because I had no idea of the condition of the plane, I had at least to try and to delay the takeoff until daylight to have a better chance for an emergency landing in case of technical problems. I thought feverish how to play for time. First I asked … for manual refuelling… then for weather charts, which won me ten more minutes. In the end, I had to take of in the middle of the night. Believe me, to fly with an aircraft that had just gone through such an emergency landing was risky enough and then Mahmud topped it all by telling me that we were flying to Mogadishu. Mogadishu? I had no idea, where that was, I didn’t even know where Somalia was. As a first officer on a 737, the farest I had ever gotten was Cairo. Lucky for us, on our maps, which only showed the 737-routes, the southernmost spot was just Mogadischu, two millimeter away from the bottom margin.

How was Mahmud after his act of violence?

Very focused. I needed a first officer. And finally he was where he wanted to be all the time, in the pilot’s seat, with Jürgen Schumann’s cap on his head.

How did you react to him?

We all behaved just right without thinking much about a strategy. We were cooperative without sucking up to the hijackers just as every instructional film recommends.

[...]

Did it help that you had to concentrate on the technology?

Very. Being ruthlessly exposed to those people was the most difficult thing I had to suffer because I like to be in control. But at least I had something to do whereas the passengers were confined to their seats, belts fastened, without information. They weren’t even allowed to speak. And because the sunshades had to be down all the time they didn’t even know where we were. Sometimes they were allowed to use the lavatory, that was all. That was much worse than what I experienced — I believe.

[...]

What do you think [of the fact that the 20th- and 25th anniversaries of the "Landshut" hijacking went almost unnoticed, different from the 30th]?

Maybe the media are so eager because most of the witnesses will be dead in a couple of years. To think of how old the then chancellor [Helmut Schmidt] is now. Not to forget the discussion about the petitions for clemency of Mohnhaupt and Klar [Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar were among the masterminds of the "second generation" of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and the crimes commited during the "German Autumn". The were detained, trialled and sentenced in the Eighties, Mohnhaupt to five terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. After the minimum term of 24 years, she was set free in March 2007 on parole. Klar was sentenced to six terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. 1992 he got an additional life sentence in a different trial.] … This discussion has irritated me very much.

Why?

… When the consequences of terrorism are discussed, it’s mostly about the consequences for the state. And now the state is supposed to show mercy because state and society have overcome terrorism. That may be, but have the bereaved overcome it? If somebody is able to show mercy it’s the bereaved. I think that Klar and Mohnhaupt deserve more than just those 26 years. They ought to leave prison only in a coffin.

The discussion about pardon [for the Baader-Meinhof terrorists] has offended you.

Very much so. In spite of the fact that my suffering was limited. But I don’t even want to begin to imagine how Jürgen Schumann’s widow feels, or the widows of Schleyer und Buback [Siegfried Buback, German chief federal prosecutor from 1974-1977, his driver and a security officer, can be considered the first victims of the "German Autumn". They were murdered in a drive-by shooting on April 7, 1977.], or the children of the security officers. I don’t intend to mention all the names here, there are so many who were murdered in cold blood. Okay, there may be good reasons to ask for mercy, but then the perpetrator ought to be deserving of it. Does Mohnhaupt? I don’t know. But Klar, who is still adamant that the fight isn’t over yet? How can he ask a state for mercy he is fighting? That is cowardice. Alright, the president has denied Klar that [in 2007, Christian Klar's mercy petition was rejected], but I fear that Klar will be released sooner or later.

What does a life sentence for Klar mean to you?

Satisfaction? It would go together with my sense of justice. That in any case. I will tell you something: Three of our four hijackers were killed by the GSG 9, and the only survivor, Andrawes, is suffering for life. I am glad for that.

She was shot during the raid and can’t walk properly anymore…

… and is in pain. Yes.

Do you wish she were suffering from a bad conscience as well?

How can one determine anything like that? It’s not measurable anyway.

[Notabene that Jürgen Vietor's witness account at Souhaila Andrawe's court trial exonerated her in many details because he chose to tell the facts instead of taking revenge.]

[...]

Did you ever have nightmares?

No.

[...]

Never been scared again?

Never.

Did you assess passengers henceforth? Who looks suspicious? Who is acting oddly?

No.

But you surely forewent the “Landshut”, didn’t you?

I’ll tell you something now that is hardly believable. When a colleague asked me years later whether I’ve ever flown the “Landshut” again, I said that I didn’t know.

What? Tourists have nicked pukebags from the “Landshut” and you didn’t care whether you had to enter that plane or not?

Wait, it gets even more remarkable: I looked up my old flight schedules. My first scheduled flight after the hijacking was with the “Landshut”. Of 80 possible 737-jets the “Landshut”. I have proof of that.

[...]

The last hours on October 17 and 18.

Yes, things were coming to a head now. Day five, Mahmud was at the end of his tether. He submitted his last ultimatum. At 15:00 at the latest, the Baader-Meinhof group and the other terrorists were to arrive at Mogadishu or he’d blow us all up. Our last information was that the federal government wasn’t going to give in. So they tied our hands behind our backs with the women’s nylons, shoved us into seats and fastened the seatbelts. Even the children’s seatbelts were fastened. Then they uncorked the duty-free spirit… and emptied the bottles on top of us. “So that you will burn better.” Ah well… In the end, they applied plastic explosives everywhere. I had been in the military and saw at once that it looked like the real thing. And the detonators were definitely genuine: brass sheathing. When I looked at the clock it was ten to three.

May I ask a fallacious question?

Whether we didn’t fight even then, right?

Is that the question you are asking yourself?

It has been asked it before many times. I have always admitted that we let ourselves drive like lambs to the slaughter. But who has never felt a gun at his neck ought to judge very carefully.

What I really wanted to ask is whether it is true that in the face of death one seed a fast-motion playback of one’s life.

That is a myth. I saw nothing at all anymore, only the hands of the clock. Now you have ten minutes more to live, now nine, when suddenly, five minutes before time, excited radio voices could be heard from the cockpit. Mahmud came running and asked me how long it would take a Boeing 707 from Frankfurt to Mogadishu. I started to do the numbers. Adrenaline works miracles. Imagine, I hadn’t slept even a minute for several days. So I figured out: we are close to the equator, Frankfurt lies 50 degrees north of us, roughly 3000 miles, a bit of slope distance as well: roughly seven or eight hours. That was good because it was exactly the time they had told Mahmud via the radio. Then he cried joyfully: “They’ll exchange! They’ll exchange!” What a relief.

[...]

Then, when it was dark, the plane was raided. Your second birth.

One can put it like that.

The mission of the anti terror unit GSG 9 was triumphal.

Yes, brilliant.

Was it worth the risk? Just to not having to release eleven imprisoned terrorists?

I never gave it a thought.

You never gave it a thought? The state could have given in and set you free without such a risk.

That is a touchy point. Let me put it like that: Should somebody ask me whether I thought while we were in that situation that the state ought not to budge and I’d reply with yes, I’d lie. We have beseeched the chancellor to exchange, we begged over the radio. Life is important. Who wants to victimize himself. But had I been in front of a TV set I, too, would have said that the state must not budge.

[...]

So you understand [Chancellor Helmut Schmidt]?

His moral dilemma, yes. Guilt and liability are hard to escape. At that time I have simply begged for my life, as Mr. Schleyer did.

The chancellor considered himself to be in a sort of war against terrorism and put himself, together with his crisis squad, almost all of them former Wehrmacht members, in a sort of combat situation.

But it was a war the terrorists waged against the state. That a politician taps into his experience as a soldier I can, as a soldier, understand.

What do you think if hostages are taken in Iraq or Afghanistan. To pay or not to pay?

What is the state supposed to do? To budge? How big is the danger to produce copycat crimes and thus even more victims in the long run? Exactly that is the question to which nobody has an answer. I am not presumptious enough to consider my opinion important just because of my experience as a victim.

[...]

I could have died through an officer’s bullet. Did this thought occur to you?

The government had even taken into account that some of us hostages would die … It is bordering on a miracle that no hostage and no GSG 9-officer died.

It must have been an incredible ruckus.

The banging away seemed endless and if the GSG 9-boys hadn’t hollered all the time we hadn’t even known thatthere were Germans attacking. “Where are you pigs?” “Here, you pigs!”

They hollered that?

Believe it or not. And it felt good to hear it.

[...]

Did you ever talk about that to the GSG-9-commander, Ulrich Wegener, the hero of Mogadishu?

I met him recently for the first time since 30 years. It was very helpful because he was able to explain some details previously unknown to me. For example that at the latters they got at Mogadishu rungs were missing.

Not a personal word?

Only technical stuff. Nothing deep.

What do you consider deep?

Something like questions of innocence and guilt, like those we just discussed. That is deep. In the sense of profound.

You close yourself off, in a psychological sense?

I don’t have any secrets.

[...]

And still, many think you are a hero.

I don’t. Heroes look out for danger. I was exposed to it. And even that by mere chance. On October 13, the day we took off from Mallorca, I was on standby when the first officer fell sick and I stood in for him.

Good God, how does one ever say “thank you” for anything like that?

He never said “thank you”. I am still waiting for my bottle of bubbly. But seriously, I don’t even know the colleague’s name. I have never tried to find it out.

Are you sometimes amazed at yourself?

A little bit. And at this point I remember a peculiar thing. When I was with Mahmud in the cockpit, I heard scratching noises and suddenly turned around and saw an empty seat in front of the emergency exit. I thought I go and sit down there. Later I learned that the GSG 9 was watching us with night sights and hoped that I would move away from Mahmud. I don’t believe in telepathy but that is truly amazing, isn’t it?

Do you believe in luck? In fate? Or is everything mere chance.

We were damned lucky.

There had been children on board.

Yes, it could all have been much more sad than it was anyway.

Have you ever met Jürgen Schumann’s widow?

No, never. There isn’t anything about her in the media. She must be very bitter.

Mr. Vietor, you are retired. What are you doing now?

My partner and I do a lot of travelling with the camper.

You are divorced?

Yes, and believe me, that really hurt me. I was virtually depressive. It had nothing to do with the hijacking.

Sure.

Sure. I am fine now. I just regret that I can not live in Canada.

Nice and far away.

In Vancouver, wonderful city. But the Canadians don’t want a pensioner.

So far Jürgen Vietor’s account. What happened to the other participants in the drama?

Jürgen Vietor and flight attendant Gabriele Dillmann 1977

Jürgen Vietor and Gabriele von Lutzau 2007

The “Landshut” served the Deutsche Lufthansa until 1985 and then went on an odyssey serving many owners around the globe. Until January 2008 she flew for TAF Linhas Aereas under the registration number PT-MTB in Brasil. Since January 2008, after 38 years and about 30.000 trips, she is now placed as a monument of herself in a remote spot of Fortaleza airport. The name “Landshut” is still in use by the Lufthansa. Currently, an Airbus A330 is thus named.

The Bavarian town of Landshut named a street after Jürgen Schumann and the Lufthansa the building of their flight training school in Bremen. Different from his colleague Vietor, Schumann can not hand back the Bundesverdienstkreuz that had been awarded to him posthumously.

Monika Schumann is still, so it can be safely assumed, serving her life sentence. Waltrude Schleyer‘s ended when she died on March 21, 2008 at the age of 92, 31 years after the RAF had murdered her husband.

From October 1964 until June 1965, Leutnant Jürgen Schumann received training at Luke AFB under Colonel James Jabarra. Memorial page here (in German).

Christian Klar, apart from Birgit Hogefeld the last RAF member still in prison, will be released by “the heirs of Freisler, Inc.” early in 2009. He already enjoys unsupervised furloughs and a job is waiting for him.

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the man whose strength, authority and brains saw Germany safely through the most difficult time since WWII, was, at the age of 89, recently publicly reproved because his smoking habit was setting a bad example for society, to show that we have got our priorities right.

The Federal Republic of Germany, who was adamant in 1977 never to talk to terrorists again, pledged at a donor conference on December 19, 2007 twenty million Euros for the Palestinians, payable until 2010.

By Dominique Devaux

At 10 am on the morning of Friday 19 Adriana, her son and I were collected by car from our hotel by a young German man ‘Klaus’ from near Essen, who had come to Cologne with his wife and mother, and who had been instructed to accompany us to the meeting. He drove us to the city of Leverkusen which is not far from Cologne and parked in a location near to the River Rhine. As we were walking from the car to the towpath besides the river to reach the location of the meeting, we were stopped in our path by a group of shouting protesters who linked arms in order to prevent us walking down the ramp. They were a mixture of male and female, shouting ‘nazis, racists’ etc. I managed to get past them, but Adriana, her son and the driver were surrounded and impeded from proceeding further. The driver ‘Klaus’ was manhandled and pushed about as he tried to protect Adriana. There were some police further down the ramp and after some minutes they belatedly ran up the ramp to sort out the melee that had formed (see photo 1). Rather than assisting Adriana, as a legitimate invitee, to pass the protesing mob, they told everyone to move away. At this point, as I would not have been able to gain access to the meeting without Adriana, I joined her and the rest of the group and we drove back to Cologne.

There was also a public rally in a nearby area of Leverkusen, and I believe it was at this location that Michael Kucherov was attacked. As fate would have it, he was picked up and rescued by car by the two BNP officials who had also tried in vain to gain access to the meeting.

In Cologne we managed to meet up with our German friend, Multikultur and we spent the afternoon together.

At 6 pm we were all again picked up by our driver, Klaus and taken to a location some 12 km outside Cologne, on the opposite side of the Rhine where we were due to meet the delegates who had spent the day in the boat, the Moby Dick. There was quite a crowd of people waiting on the banks of the river, mostly respectable looking, elderly German people. We were then informed that the location for the dinner had been leaked to the counterprotesters and that it was no longer safe to go there. There was no sign of the boat, so the people on land walked along the banks of the Rhine until we came to a beer celler, where we all sat down waiting for service. But before long, the proprietor of the establishment came to tell us that we were not welcome there and requested us to leave. Most left quietly, but Adriana protested vociferously with the proprietor and when she arrived outside, staged an impromtu rallying speech to the assembled crowd, which was warmly applauded. We were also pleased to meet up with Stefan Herre and Christine Dietrich of the blog Politically Incorrect.

We then returned by car to the city, which was totally sealed off to car traffic and difficult to navigate on foot. There were masses of police vehicles, armoured cars and police forces from many German states.

On the morning of Saturday 20th we had the option either to make our way early to the Heumarkt or to meet up at a rendez-vous point at the airport station. At around 8.30 I decided to make my way directly to Heumarkt, where already groups of antifa were arriving. I got through the police barriers and met up with Adriana, her son, Klaus and Multikultur in the square. There were barriers all around the square and a considerable police presence (see photo 2). There was a large press contingency. The Italian MEP Mario Borghezio was there and a couple of representatives of Pro-Koln together with approx. 50 German citizens, some young but mainly elderly. We also met three people from France, from the organization MNR Megret – Mouvement National Francais (one of whom was blind), some Spaniards, many journalists from all over, including one from Poland who was very interested to learn whether Mario Borghezio had any contact with like-minded Poles. After 10.00 am it became increasing difficult for people coming to the Heumarkt to gain access. Before arriving at the police barricades where they had to make their case for entry to the square, they had to pass through thick layers of chanting and drumming, hostile antifa. We heard by phone from Stefan Herre that the group coming from the airport had been stopped by counter-protesters and that there seemed little chance of them getting to the location of the rally in spite of a heavy police presence.

At 12 am, the time the rally was due to start, it was obvious that the main bulk of the attendees would not arrive, so Mario Borghezio got up on the podium to speak, holding in his hand a copy of Oriana Fallaci’s book, The Rage and the Pride. But after only about 30 seconds the power was cut to his mike and an announcement was made that the rally was over and they immediately started to dismantle the podium.

We were then trapped inside the square. The only people given police escort away were Mario Borghezio and Adriana Bolchini Gaigher, who ended up in Bonn for a further 6 hours under ‘police protection’. The rest were penned into the square in ‘protective custody’ and were not allowed to leave. I had struck up a conversation with a local German man ‘Fritz’ and we, together with Multikultur, decided to try and get out using an old Press Card that ‘Fritz’ had brought along. After intial reluctance the police officer let us through the barrier and we made our escape through the quieter back streets, dodging in and out of the metro tunnels until we got past the counter-protesters and look the long way round to my hotel. I understand that those remaining in the square had to stay there for quite some time until the police escorted them over the bridge to a barrage of shouts from the antifa and commandeered taxis which took them to the offices of Pro-Koln where they stayed, besieged, for several hours.

At my hotel we met up with AMDG and Adosinda, who had been unable to break through into the square, and later in the day we were joined by Stefan Herre and Christine Dietrich who had been stranded at the airport and we spent some good time together discussing the recent events.

One other point of note. An alternative rally in the Wallfaff Square had been registered with the police, with Ralph Giordano, Mina Ahadi and our old friend Udo Ulfkotte as speakers. They go under the slogan ‘The Third Force’ and want to position themselves between the Anti-Islamisierungs-Kongreß and the counter demonstrators. AMDG came across this rally on his travels around the town. There were not too many attendees.

We tried all weekend to meet up with the organizer of the rally, Markus Wiener from Pro-Koln but were blocked at every point. It was our impression that the counter-demonstraters took the initiative on every occasion and the police were less than helpful in assisting the legitimate protesters hold their event.

From the outside point of view, the EU remains an attractive location for investment, trade relations and work opportunities. A coveted source of financing for development aid projects. A place where human rights gain more attention than in many parts of the rest of the world. But it has no political power, it is not a “global player” on the world stage. Furthermore, it is lacking in the Common Foreign and Security Policy, CFSP.

Economic success coupled with weakness in foreign policy makes the EU – in the eyes of the rest of the world – a huge NGO and an object of desire for other political forces. The Islamization of Europe is at the forefront, followed by the Turkish claim of dominating Europe. This country is paving its way forward. Negotiations in the sense of “giving and taking” do not take place. Turkey wants a Turkish Europe!

The EU finds itself in a similar situation to that of Byzantium before the Turkish conquest. Then as now, there is a resolute opponent vis a vis a discordant, almost self destructive entity. Islamization is pursued by the Islamic world in its totality. Turkey as a Muslim country reinforces this trend, adding its expansive nationalism.

How can these facts be recognized?

By looking at the current political situation of the EU
By looking at the current political situation of Turkey
By looking at the hegemonic positions within the international community

1.The current political situation of the EU

Much is said at EU summits – held in a six-month rhythm to hand over the presidency – about common grounds and integration, from the reunification of Europe to the enlargement of the EU.

In fact, it is precisely the lack of common grounds that impedes a successful enlargement. This is particularly true for Turkey. The EU is looking for salvation in the enlargement, even if it is a disadvantage for the vast majority of the population. In general, the will of the majority of the European population is not reflected in the decision-making of the EU institutions. This is obviously the reason for a widely visible EU scepticism.

For the majority of Europe’s population, EU-enlargement, in addition to globalization, has increased pressure to perform, often in conjunction with lower incomes.

In other words, national interests are still dominant at the summit conferences. There is none of the so often apostrophized “European spirit”! Only this so very much desired European spirit would be able to give birth to a self-confident Europe playing a decisive role in the world.

Unfortunately, there are still very different perceptions:

The EU’s foreign policy is the mirror image of the EU member states:

o In the recent past this has been particularly visible in the discordant policy of French President Sarkozy. He thinks as a French, not as a European, when he speaks of the Mediterranean Union, when he pursues French military pacts or agreements on nuclear cooperation with Mediterranean countries.

o The NATO membership of eastern European countries whose foreign policy has caused a tilt toward the U.S.

o Britain continues to tilt towards the U.S.

o The split behavior of the EU towards Turkey raises concern: intra camera, the European Council in 1999 pledged Turkey’s full EU membership, carried by supporters and opponents in the Council without informing the public of that motion.

In doing so, the EU is overlooking, for example:

That Turkey has large deficits in human rights and therefore basic conditions for opening negotiations have not been met. The EU arbitrarily defined that basic requirements were “sufficiently” met and started negotiations started on 03 10 2005, which have since continued against better judgment and without regard to public opinion. Asylum status granted to Turkish citizens in European countries is not seen as a contradiction.

That the special role of the army and the religious authority is deeply rooted in the constitution of the (national-religious) Turkish state. This is contrary to EU principles. Turkey is not a democracy in any Western sense.

That public life in Turkey is determined by Islam. With its ideology Islam is in total contrast to secular Western individualism. Full membership of Turkey means accession without meeting the conditions all other EU member states are subject to. This would be simply mean the end of a “WE” feeling and the end to European integration.

That Turkey’s accession to the EU would entail an enormous financial burden, and as a result the EU would end up funding Turkish national ambitions running against EU goals, including those of a military nature.

That due to the lack of its own common foreign policy, the EU, having to follow Turkish interests, would helplessly be drawn into Turkey’s neighborhood conflicts.

Like the UN Security Council, the EU has, as a result of lack of common ground in foreign policy, only limited opportunities in realizing alternatives and must finally recognize that despite many criticisms of the United States, the US is the only player in the western world. European navel-gazing cannot be considered world politics!

Although the deficiencies of the EU are becoming more visible after every summit, and despite negative public opinion surveys and the continuously admonishing voices of highly regarded personalities, EU institutions are praising the achievements of this integration project in countless events and brochures. The last Austrian EU presidency blared: “The EU should be fun!”

However, the message of these events consists of hollow Valium-like words. There is simply no credibility. Concerning Islam or Turkey, for example, the following deliberately misleading vocabulary is used:

Abrahamic religions: there is a common ancestor, Abraham, that unites all monotheistic religions. Why are the visible differences in religious practice not raised? Reference to a “common ancestor” does not help us today in solving our problems in peaceful coexistence.

Islam is a religion of peace; there must be a distinction between Islam and Islamism; there is no justification in general suspicion; there is no uniform Islam; the headscarf is just an ordinary piece of clothing; there are prejudices against Islam leading to Islamophobia.

Turkey is a functioning democracy; Turkey is a secular state; Erdogan and his party are “moderate Islamist”, which is already linguistically a contradiction in itself. Negotiations without pre-set achievements and goals, referendum after conclusion of treaty.

After careful scrutiny, however, the critical citizen comes to the following converse conclusion:

Islam is not a private religion. It is rather a union with the state. The collective is in the foreground, individualism is seen as selfishness. Only what was revealed to Mohammed in the seventh century and announced as divine law is relevant to the Muslim. A law having been passed by democratic decision-building must not be accepted by a Muslim when it is contrary to Islamic ideas. In consequence, Islam excludes tolerance and compromise.

Islam is in direct contrast to western ideas, and raises the question of whether the principle of religious freedom is applicable. Islam ultimately considers itself a (totalitarian) ideology of salvation for all humankind. With this follows peer pressure to self-imposed segregation from society and the peer pressure to demonstrate religious symbols on the individual level (headscarf).

Arabic is the language of God; the Koran can neither be read nor understood in any other language. The Islamic world suffers due to the idea that it has lost civilizational superiority to the West and thus feels excluded. Muslims speak of Islam having been offended by the West.

The questioning of Islam or even criticism is considered Islamophobia. Dialogue from the perspective of Muslims means preaching of the Koran followed by conversion. The motto “integration through participation” aims to enshrine rights and does not mean integration into the Western model of life. The visible outcome can be seen in the establishment of parallel societies.

As long as the Muslims are in the minority, they deny any proselytization intents. This deception is called Taqiyya. In an Islamic environment non-Muslims can expect neither an understanding of their way of life, nor can they expect any tolerance. For instance, the concept of equal treatment (reciprocity) is rejected as unreasonable by the president of the Islamic Community in Austria.

Islamic religious teachers in Austrian schools announce ” that men and women may not sit or work together; that it is forbidden in Islam for a schoolgirl to go on field trips or go swimming together with boys; that suicide bombers in Iraq and Palestine are sacrificing themselves for God and that it is sinful to do military service in countries not ruled by Islam.”

In everyday life, the Islamic point of view creates clear obstacles to the western way of life with respect to eating, drinking, and in the mixing of the sexes. Products for Muslims almost require a clearance certificate. Even the economy is ruled by Islamic banking. Banks may not charge interest and may not deal in any areas contrary to Islamic rules.

Either in anticipatory obedience or at the request of Muslims, the majority of society caters to the following special particularities:

Pork-free meals and ban of alcohol.

Sexual segregation in schools and the public. State of the art psychoanalysis, such as the ideas of Sigmund Freud, is dismissed.

Women may appear in public only when accompanied by their husbands and wearing a veil.

Removal of crucifixes from schools and hotel rooms.

Acceptance of the refusal of the salute to the flag in the armed services as well as extensive special treatment of Muslim conscripts.

Accepting reduced personal performance as a consequence of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Respecting the Islamic ban on interest (Islamic Banking) and other prohibitions.

Christianity is equated with the West in every dialogue with the Muslims, the secular individualist society is totally blanked out. Those who choose not to follow a religion (synkretics, agnostics, atheists, and others) raise the legitimate question of “Who represents me in all the interfaith dialogues? Why is my philosophy of life and the concept of separation of religion and state worth less than religious belief, especially Islam “?

This applies, among others, to the Austrian president who describes himself as agnostic. People like police officers, ambulance drivers, hospital and school staff who in their daily lives are in direct contact with Muslims and experience the difficulties of integration are discouraged from reporting their often negative experiences.

Muslim expectations are fully complied with in everyday life. These range from the provision of Muslim working clothes by the Vienna local government to the declaration of sacredness of any and all Islamic values and ideas. The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, the theaters, and the churches do not ask questions but are content with “playful” “intercultural” events such as hiking or football games. The exchange is shallow and comparable to the exchange of cooking recipes.

Initiated by the Austrian government to aid migrants and asylum seekers, the so-called “Integration Platform” seems content with the part of funding, rather than the widely announced policy of “Demand and Fund”, thus solidly setting in stone the already present parallel society. The acquisition of basic German skills prior to immigration is the only demand in a series of recently proposed measures. The Austrian Islamic Community complains about this measure being excessive.

Islamophobia is widely discussed, but not Christophobia! The OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) is committed to establishing sharia as superior to human rights within the UN and has already been promised by the president of the UN Human Rights Council the elimination of criticism of religious laws and practices such as female genital mutilation.

The ideas presented by the Anglican bishop of Canterbury and the modt senior judge of England can only be seen as self-abandonment and total subjugation to Islam: They would not object to the introduction of sharia to become part of British common law.

As a result, Muslims are not integrated and a Muslim parallel society – unwilling to integrate – is created and furthered. We must bear in mind that a society is acting in a “positive” racist way if it does not demand that immigrants adopt the host society’s values. Society is turning away, rather than helping!

What does all of the above mean for coexistence with Muslims?

Can the Western way of life (secular individualism with a voluntary practice of religion as well as individual identity as a societal cornerstone) at all hold up against an Islamic and oriental-patriarchal dominated way of life (group identity and nationalism)?

Islam seriously questions the principles of this Western way of life although these principles are the result of a long and sometimes painfully hard-fought opinion-forming process which are viewed by Western society as an achievement:

Separation of church and state
Freedom of religion, freedom of expression culminating in extreme formulations
o Religion and sexuality are a private matter
o Art is free to do anything and everything
Gender equality

The 1912 Austrian law on Islam recognized Islam as a religious group. The pre-condition of this recognition – that Islam “is not in contradiction with the state law” – was never verified. Accordingly, the following facts remain unresolved:

Islam recognizes our laws only when they are covered by Islamic law. This approach excludes tolerance and compromise and brings religion into politics. In daily politics Islamic values are not dealt with in the process of parliamentary discussion but demanded from “the outside”. Muslims demand concessions using the argument of religious sanctity. Rejection, criticism, and questioning of such demands are immediately denounced as Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia and intolerance. As a result, two different sets of laws are established and thus an irreversible split of society. This constitutes the end of democratic discourse.

Islam sees non-Muslims as infidels, as second-class people, and acknowledges no gender equality.

Islam considers peace as the state of the world after its full Islamization, after the elimination of the Western world. Any peaceful coexistence within our society is only an interim phase on the way.

Islam as a belief and value system cannot be integrated into the European society, yet the individual Muslim can very well be integrated. He can easily preserve his faith in Western society. European tolerance considers members of all religions and those thinking differently as equal, refers faith to the private sphere, and considers the public space as secular.

Our future will be decided not only based on the achievements of the past, but by a deliberate advocacy of Europeans for their values. These include in particular the values of family and of solidarity in the economy. The isolation of the individual and the increase of the precarious economic conditions could make a slogan such as “Islam is the solution” even more attractive. Individuality as such brings with it a rapid decay of any society.

2. Looking at the current political situation of Turkey

Turkey is a regional power with a specific foreign policy and foreign intervention doctrine, which enables it to counter the divided EU foreign policy with great power. It has only its own interests in mind, EU interests are not considered or are even actively worked against. In line with this foreign policy opportunism the thrust of its foreign policy is not only aimed at the EU or Europe, but also the Islamic and central Asian regions.

There is no shortage of military interventions to enforce its foreign policy objectives. Approximately 30,000 Turkish soldiers have been stationed in Cyprus since 1974, although the reason for intervention (the fall of the Greek military regime) has been eliminated. Military interventions in northern Iraq are also part of the intervention doctrine. Turkey intervenes in order to enforce its interests; if a military intervention is not feasible, Turkey uses any means of considerable political and economic pressure. This includes diplomatic activities in the U.S. and the EU with respect to the Armenian genocide and the Kurdish PKK.

Turkey is working in particular opposition to EU interests in the framework of the OIC, where the secretary-general is a Turk and an important spokesperson in the battle of Islam with the West. This was the case in the the cartoon controversy as it is now with the current efforts of the OIC to subordinate the UN Human Rights Declaration of 1948 to sharia law. This notion aims at subduing criticism regarding the Islamic view on human rights.

Turkey has a constitution incompatible with that of the EU because political life and religion are under the influence of the military. The right to exercise religious beliefs and the right to belong to a religious group are not in the individual’s sphere as it is in the western world.

The religious authority, the Diyanet, regulates the religious life of Sunni Islam, the confession of the majority of the population. Other beliefs are disadvantaged. The once thriving Christian minority has been reduced to numerical insignificance. Even 20 million Alevis, who are considered Muslim, are impeded by the Sunni majority from practicing their religion.

The Diyanet appoints imams and sends them to countries with Turkish populations and with populations of Turkish descent, for example to Germany and Austria. There are local Diyanet representations in both countries fostering religious and national ties with Turkey, but not mandating integration efforts into the host society. In Austria Diyanet is represented by ATIB. Turkish secularism is imposed from above, not grown bottom up like Western secularism. The comparison with French laicism is misleading.

The founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk, established the separation of religion and state about eighty years ago, the military being the guarantor of the secular state and the overseer of everything from religious life to the banning of political parties. Despite all of Kemalism’s control, its efforts to enshrine secularism in the population have failed. Even today there are still two antagonistic groups: the religious population in rural areas, including migrants to the cities, and the relatively smaller group of western oriented city population.

One reason for concern is the failure of the Turkish constitutional court: the judges could not agree on the banning of the ruling party and the banning of the prime minister, and the head of state as well as other politicians from politics as such due to disrespect of principles of Turkish laicism. For all intents and purposes Turkey finds itself in a clash of cultural beliefs. The headscarf has been and remains a highly explosive ideological matter. In twisting the facts, the EU supports the Islamic side.

The influx of capital from Muslim sources is one instrument for this clash of cultures is. If one practices Islam, one can count on economic and financial support. This applies not only to areas of housing, work, school and alimentation, but also to entrepreneurs in financing and contracting.

The “moderate Islamist” government is step by step leading Turkey towards the establishment of an Islamic state, and is currently completing the necessary ideological reorientation within the state’s administrative system.

The Turkish constitution provides not only for the special roles of military and religious authority, but also for a religious-ethnic centralized state. Consequently, Turkey’s constitution recognizes no ethnic minorities, such as the twelve million Kurds living within its borders.

In accordance with this centralized state, a striking nationalism is lived in Turkey being protected by penal code provisions (prohibition of insulting Turkdom, no criticism of the official position towards the Armenian genocide and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus). The omnipresent Atatürk images and statues testify to this nationalism together with the national motto – visible almost everywhere – “If you’re a Turk, you’re happy”. In addition to Islam, this nationalism offers an explanation for the lack of integration readiness and capabilities of the Turks in Europe.

A shocking demonstration of this religious-nationalist attitude is the murder of the employees of a bible-printing press in Malatya in 2007. The perpetrators justified this act as a fight against the enemies of the faith and the Turkish nation. Then German socialist MEP Vural Öger, of Turkish descent, poured oil into the fire when he declared that the EU was responsible for this criminal act because of the pressure applied on the Turkish legislative to institute reforms.

Bringing the Turkish constitution in line with EU principles would entail the destruction of both pillars of the Turkish constitution and would thus bring an end to Atatürk’s Turkey. In addition, it can be seen in all clarity that the EU will either accept a factual military dictatorship or an Islamic state within its ranks provided the “negotiations” with the EU continue to proceed at the same pace. In any case, the EU will remain the pawn of Turkish politics.

Unperturbed of these inconsistencies, Turkey postulates incomprehensible declarations and claims an accession date between 2013 and 2015:

We have met the conditions and have the right to full membership.

The EU has no right to reject Turkey. Turkey accuses the EU, in an act of incredible insinuation, of being a Christian club, at the same time ignoring its own significant contributions to the OIC – an exclusive organization of Muslim countries. A Christian equivalent to the OIC does not even exist.

Even in the Council of Europe the creation of a European flag with a cross – following the example of the Pan European Union – failed due to Turkey’s resistance.

Turkey accuses the EU of discrimination and complains about EU admonitions. In truth, Turkey receives an extraordinary special treatment, which has not been received before by any member state. Even Croatia is tackled in a tougher way. Turkey is obstinate and ignores the mood of the European population like an invading army.

Turkeys ploughs its way into the European Union. It bullies concessions and does not show any willingness to fulfill accession criteria. It follows its well-established negotiation tactics: wooing – being offended – threatening.

It wants a Turkish Europe, as clearly expressed by the Turkish prime minister, during his recent appearance in Cologne.

As a result of these unfair and persistent negotiating tactics Turkey sits in most EU bodies and is well represented in think-tanks, and is thus forging its “own accession conditions”. Together with Spain, Turkey sets the tone in the United Nations “Alliance of Civilizations” initiative. A weak EU is largely helpless in the face of this Turkish determination, which is supported by the hegemonic interests of the US. Hence, it is clear that

The voices of critics – no matter how high-level and competent, such as oriental Christians or fully integrated immigrants – fall on deaf ears.

EU institutions do not acknowledge that to the majority of European people a full membership of Turkey is not only not an advantage, but rather a significant disadvantage.

EU institutions see the population as its greatest enemy (see the undesired outcome of the vote on the Reform Treaty in Ireland).

All arguments in favor are a distortion of the facts:

Turkey reconciles Islam and democracy and is a bridge to the Islamic world: because of its constitution, Turkey is not a democracy in the Western sense and is the scene of daily conflict between Islam and secularism. The Islamic world sees Turkey as a lever as well as part of its program to islamize the world. However, Turkey is also an adversary because of its military pact with Israel.

The geopolitical position of Turkey and its military force would strengthen the EU’s role in the world: due to the absence of an EU-proactive intervention policy, Turkey would conversely use the EU for its own ends. In any event, the EU would be fully dragged into Turkey’s neighborhood conflicts. The EU would thereby be destabilized.

The EU has promised accession, Turkey has been waiting for forty years: there was no democratically legitimate promise. During those forty years, Turkey has moved away from Europe, during the 1970’s it even explicitly turned away from the EU and Europe.

Without accession the reforms will break down and discontinue: Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe and as such has been overdue with its reforms for decades. These reforms should primarily serve Turkey’s self-interest. The EU is not obligated to reward Turkey.

The economic potential: economic successes and opportunities do not justify candidacy, even if these successes cater to special interests. Furthermore, there is no additional benefit in accession since Turkey is already part of the existing customs union, among others. In any case, Turkey is a newly industrialized country with specific characteristics such as a high proportion of population employed in agriculture (30%); high unemployment, particularly among young people, receiving financing as a condition for market opportunities (one of the largest debtors to the IMF), there is considerable economic risk and corruption, low per capita income, child labor, inadequate patent protection and uncertain law enforcement.

Reason becomes nonsense, benefits turn into menace.

3. Looking at the hegemonic positions within the international community

Who determines the course of events?

Without claiming to be exhaustive and in light of the above, the following picture evolves: those who depart from the European navel-gazing to view the world from an outside point of view recognize that – apart from a few countries active in world politics – Islam and the international flow of capital combined with energy and the supply of raw materials dictate the events.

In our Western Hemisphere, it is the United States which largely intervenes in the course of events. U.S. foreign policy means energy. The Islamic world pursues with increasing dedication and success the Islamization of the rest of the world, whereby it makes use of the oil weapon and the resulting capital.

An international network of capital flows, outside the control of national governments, but also of international organizations, stretches across the entire world and makes decisions that suit this network. A financial center must remain attractive and determine all other policies.

China is becoming noticeable , e.g. in Africa, in securing its supply of raw materials. Russia has reasserted its position as a global player during the recent conflict with Georgia.

There is thus the question of what the individual can and must do in this situation. This is a grave issue for all those who are committed to European values.

The burden of our history compels us not only to reflect on the past and to avow a “Never again”, but above all a vigilance against the zeitgeist, the “mainstream”. The art world, much of the media, the churches, science and many political parties are looking away when it comes to Islam and Turkey. There is already limited freedom of expression and fear of speaking the truth.

The putting down of civil society and of Christianity, in particular the Catholic Church, the attack on the family, the promotion of gender mainstreaming, equality of homosexual relationships are not a substitute for action! Limits of individuality must certainly be set.

As in the past, which is burdening us so very much, it is also necessary to look and watch carefully and to speak the truth in public. Only he who wants to know the truth will be able to learn the truth! There cannot be any excuses made in hindsight. These would be null and void.

Maybe this time it will be possible, with the appropriate corresponding courage and perseverance, to create a counter-weight to the zeitgeist and to clarify that 3 mutiplied by 3 equals 9 and nothing else.

Raising questions, sending letters to the editor in newspapers, holding speeches and the like in its multitude can effect many changes. Perhaps the above observations are helpful.

He who fights can win; he who does not fight has already lost.

The author, Dr. Harald F. boasts eleven years of work experience in Turkey, of which he served seven years as Austrian trade representative. His remarks are based on his professional experience, continuous information and several journeys to Turkey as well as personal contacts which remain to this day. Translation by ESW and KSW.

The following is a report on the current political situation in Austrian, as observed by ESW.

The political situation has been unacceptable for the past four months. The two governing parties, the socialists and the conservatives, did not get along and made each other’s lives as politicians more than difficult. This was evident on a daily basis: bickering and disagreements, hardly any serious results to be seen, despite the rather difficult situation citizens are facing in light of high taxes, rising prices, and growing immigration.

Many, including myself, never believed in the success of the grand coalition. During coalition talks, former chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel forced then presumptive chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer’s to renounce most, if not all, promises made by the socialists during the election campaign in 2006. The socialists had wanted to cancel the Eurofighter fighter jets, which the conservatives had ordered while leading the government. Another promise had been the scrapping of the university tuition (ridiculously low at 360 euros per semester). It was clear from the beginning of the coalition talks that these promises could and would not be upheld, which in turn angered socialist voters.

It was a bad start for Gusenbauer. It only went downhill. He is known as a wine expert, an intellectual, and resistant to advice offered by his cabinet. He who had wanted to be a “people’s chancellor” was never there for the people.

- – - – - – - – -

Well, until the day he decided to listen to the people and tell them, via the most popular Austrian newspaper (Die Kronenzeitung) that his party would support referendums on EU matters in the future. This comes from a party that unanimously voted in favor of the Lisbon Treaty in April. Austria was one of the first countries to ratify the treaty.

The conservatives, on the other hand, outraged by this “180-degree change in EU matters”, consider(ed) this move unacceptable. While the two parties had been at odds more or less since the signing of the coalition pact, the socialists’ change of mind was unacceptable to the fiercely pro-EU People’s Party. It is interesting to note that the socialists did not really change their minds on EU matters other than advocating future referendums. They are still in favor of the “Project”.

Basic EU rhetoric could still be heard from socialist members of parliament during this week’s parliamentary session. This included the usual:

* “Austria has benefited like no other from EU membership.” (I thought Ireland held that prize?)

* “We have to do more to communicate this to the people.” (what stopped you from doing that until now?)

* “The Lisbon Treaty is the best, the only way into the future.”

…on and on it went.

While there is great relief about the end of this government, there are valid concerns about the day after the elections. Who will (be able to) govern Austria? There is much mistrust between the governing parties, which stems from the prior coalition government between the conservatives and the freedom party led by Joerg Haider. Haider is no longer a factor in domestic politics, having split from the freedom party in 2002. The freedom party’s current leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, a charismatic, but less intellectually endowed young man, is considered by many as extreme and prone to populism. All political parties have more or less ruled out forming a coalition with the freedom party. However, the latest polls show that Strache will be a force to reckon with. There is no chance that one party will gain an absolute majority in September, which means there will have to be a coalition of some sort. This will prove difficult, if not nearly impossible. Many small parties are also bidding for the 4% hurdle to gain seats in parliament. The majority of these small groups are catering to protest voters, voters who have been sickened by the constant bickering in the past 18 months of socialist and conservative rule.

You might ask which party will receive my vote. I have been a conservative all my life. Even though I never agreed on everything the OVP stood and stands for, I considered them the lesser evil. However, having joined the counterjihad movement, having become EU-critical (Eurabia, anyone?), I have now found that I no longer feel at home in the conservative party. There is simply no room for an EU critic and skeptic in their midst. They are not addressing the immigration issue with enough fervor. They are dhimmis (those aware of the issues surrounding the Counterjihad Vienna Workshop meeting will know what I mean) through and through. And since there is only one other party that does address my worries and listens to my concerns; that stands for upholding Austrian and European values; that understands the nature of Jihad, I will give my vote to …. Well, it ain’t the socialists and it ain’t the greens. Figure it out for yourselves! What my vote will do is anyone’s guess. We are in for a hot summer and an even hotter fall!

» contact: hans-gert.poettering@europarl.europa.eu