Tag: Islam

German intel concerned about Islamists recruiting migrants

German intelligence warned Tuesday that the number of Islamic extremists in the country had increased sharply in recent months and expressed serious concern that they were recruiting among refugees.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic security watchdog, said the number of radical Salafists had surged to 7,900 in September from 7,500 in June, and that many were trying to lure asylum-seekers into their ranks.

“We are very concerned that Islamists in Germany are trying, under the cover of humanitarian assistance, to exploit the situation of the refugees for their own ends and to proselytise and recruit among asylum-seekers,” BfV president Hans-Georg Maassen said in a statement.

Germany expects to receive up to one million asylum-seekers this year, five times more than last year. Syrians, who are fleeing their war-ravaged country, form the largest group.

Maassen said that a total of 740 radical Muslims had left Germany to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq, 20 percent of them female. Around one-third of those who went to the region have returned to Germany, while about 120 of them have been killed.

He said the BfV was keeping close watch on such activities given their “significant radicalisation potential” in the migrant community.

“We are keeping a particularly close eye on unaccompanied minors among the refugees, who could be easy targets for Islamists,” he said.

German police carried out dawn raids in Berlin Tuesday targeting individuals suspected of inciting people to go and fight for the Islamic State group in Syria.

The raids began at 6:30 am (0430 GMT) and targeted, among others, a 51-year-old Moroccan suspected of recruiting for the jihadists, police said in a statement.

A 19-year-old Macedonian thought to be currently in Syria is also suspected of involvement in the recruitment drive, it said.

“We are looking for evidence to see whether these allegations are true,” a police spokesman said. No arrests were made.

One raid was conducted at an association linked to a mosque in Berlin’s central Tempelhof district, the spokesman said. Seven homes were also searched.

Source: AFP

Danish Muslims march to demand Caliphate

In September 2014 the Muslim Party in Denmark announced that Denmark would be the first Muslim country in Europe.

Now, a year later, they are demanding to be part of the Caliphate, but one in two Danish citizens favor a cap on the number of Muslims permitted to live in Denmark, a YouGov poll indicates.

The poll, which was conducted for the Danish publication Metroxpress, specifically targeted immigration from non-Western countries and also found one in four Danes do not want the country’s population to be more than 5 percent Muslim.

A video posted this weekend shows Muslims with police escort marching in Denmark screaming and demanding a caliphate.

The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party called for a national programme that would help Muslims leave Islam in March this year.

Danish People’s Party (DF) spokesman Martin Henriksen wants to see the Danish state step in and offer help to Muslims who want to leave the religion but feel bullied into staying.

“We unfortunately have seen many examples of someone wanting to leave Islam but having a hard time doing it or not daring to do it because they fear reprisals from certain groups within the Muslim communities of Denmark. This is a way in which we can begin doing something about it,” Henriksen told Politiken.

Henriksen stressed that the programme would not be proactive but would rather only help those who reached out for assistance.

“People shouldn’t directly be offered an exit. One should make the decision oneself. And if one decides that they no longer want to be there, there should be a place to go to get support and back-up,” he told Politiken.

Henriksen added that the programme would help those who “live a double life because they don’t dare to leave the religion”.

Scorn is not illegal
There are around 250,000 Muslims in Denmark and religious scholar Mogens Mogensen said that Henriksen is right that some Muslims face heavy resistance when they want to leave the faith.

But he stressed that the state should not get involved.

“If the consequences for those who want to leave Islam are within the law, then this is not an area where society should get involved. Scorn, mockery and ridicule is legal in our society. However, if one uses violence against someone who wants to leave Islam, that is illegal. But the only place where we can document that that happens is in the asylum centres,” Mogensen told Politiken.

“Grotesque” and “un-Danish”
Judging by the political reactions to Henriksen’s suggestions, an Islam exit programme seems unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon.

Representatives from government coalition parties Social Democrats and Social Liberals (Radikale) called Henriksen’s idea “grotesque” and “un-Danish”.

“We have freedom of religion in this country. And that means that politicians should not declare one religion better or worse than another. To make special initiatives aimed at particular religions is very un-Danish,” Social Democrats spokeswoman Trine Bramsen told Politiken.

Primary opposition party Venstre, however, was more open to the idea – if Henriksen can “find some money for it”.

“We should help the young people who are repressively forced to remain in an environment they don’t want to be a part of. It is precisely in these kinds of situations that the power of the state can go in and help,” Venstre spokesman Martin Geertsen told Politiken.

Top Imam vows to trample whites underfoot

A top Iman has told Muslims to use the migrant crisis to breed with European citizens and ‘conquer their countries’.

Sheikh Muhammad Ayed gave the speech at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem claiming Europe was only welcoming refugees as a new source of labour.

He said Europe was facing a demographic disaster and urged Muslims to have children with westerners so they could ‘trample them underfoot, Allah willing.’

‘Throughout Europe, all the hearts are enthused with hatred toward Muslims. They wish that we were dead, but they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in our midst,’ Infowars reports.

‘We will give them fertility. We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries.’

Birth rates are far higher in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is where most migrants are coming from.

The notion of using mass migration as a form of stealth jihad is outlined in the Koran, which states, ‘And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance.’

To move to a new land in order to bring Islam is considered a meritorious act.

Source: Daily Mail

Journalist buys fake Syrian passport for Dutch premier Rutte

A Syria-based journalist for news magazine Nieuwe Revu has managed to obtain a forged Syrian passport and ID card with a photograph of prime minister Mark Rutte on it.

Harald Doornbos paid some €750 for the passport, which he was able to pick up from the forgers within 40 hours.

The fixer told Doornbos that he would be able to enter Cyprus with the passport, which was in the name of Malek Ramadan.

Doornbos said the aim of the exercise had not been to buy a forged passport featuring Rutte, but he had been asked to supply a name and photograph, so he opted for the prime minister.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian war, thousands of blank passports and the Assad government’s printers have ended up in the hands of insurgents, according to Revu. These insurgents will sell passports showing any photo given to them to anyone willing to pay.

Doornbos describes the consequences as terrifying as it will be even more difficult for security services to detect terrorist if getting hold of a fake identity is this easy. Doornbos describes the route a terrorist will take, according to his sources:

“From an ISIS or al-Qaeda area in northern Syria a returning foreign terrorist fighter will travel to Bodrum in western Turkey. From there he makes the illegal crossing to Greece. In Greece he shows his false Syrian passport to the authorities. Since the fake passport gives a fake name, the Greeks have no idea that they are not dealing with a Syrian refugee but a member of ISIS or al-Qaeda. From Greece the journey goes through Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary. After arriving in Schengen member Hungary, the jihadist can travel with his false Syrian passport through all the other Schengen states without any further checks.”

Hungary closes main migrant crossing as EU struggles with deal

Hungary closed the main migrant crossing with Serbia and more states imposed border checks Monday as the failure of EU ministers to agree how to share the burden of a flood of refugees deepened the crisis.

With Europe’s 20-year-old Schengen passport-free zone creaking under the pressure, Austria and Slovakia said they would follow economic powerhouse Germany’s lead in reinstating border controls to deal with the flow of people.

Poland said it was considering similar steps while the Netherlands said it would have “more patrols” on its frontiers.

Long traffic jams built up on the Germany-Austria border and refugees were left stranded on non-EU Serbia’s side of the frontier with Hungary in the latest chaotic scenes from the biggest such crisis since World War II.

Yet amid opposition from eastern states, EU ministers failed to reach agreement on a plan to share out 120,000 refugees and ease the burden on frontline states from the tide of people fleeing war zones like Syria and Afghanistan.

A day before Hungary has vowed to begin arresting illegal migrants, police fenced off a gap in the razor-wire barrier with Serbia that hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government is racing to complete.

At the Roszke border crossing, several dozen migrants including many children, some in pushchairs, were stuck on the Serbian side of the border, with several women crying, after police shut the border, AFP journalists saw.

“We had heard the Hungarians were closing their border, but they told us it would be Tuesday,” cried Hassan, a Syrian in his thirties who is trying to reach Sweden.

The migrants were redirected to the official crossing around two kilometres (1.6 miles) away, from where they were being taken on buses to Roszke train station, officials said.

Hungary is on the frontline of Europe’s migrant crisis, with almost 200,000 people travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans and entering the country this year, most of them seeking to travel on to economic powerhouse Germany.

Austria and Slovakia pounced on the U-turn by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government — which had previously said it would throw open its doors to Syrian refugees — to reinstate their own border checks.

“We will proceed as Germany did,” Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said in Brussels.

Poland said it will impose border controls at the first sign of “any threat” while Netherland promised “more” patrols.

Source: AFP

Saudi Arabia offers to build 200 mosques in Germany

Saudi Arabia is offering to pay for the construction of enough mosques in Germany to facilitate the needs of every 100 refugees that enter the country. The offer comes as Europe has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq.

Fanning out across Europe, seeking refuge, some 4 million refugees are looking for a place to settle down as war ravages Syria. In Syria itself, another 6.5 million are displaced. There are only 10.6 million Syrians, just half of the nation’s total population, still living in their homes. Syrians now make up 20 percent of the planet’s refugees.

These people have needs, including food, shelter and other basics. They also want their spiritual needs met and since nearly all of them are Muslim, that means they want mosques. To meet that demand, Saudi Arabia is offering to build a mosque for every 100 refugees accepted by Germany. Similar offers may be extended to other nations.

The refugees are streaming into Europe instead of into Islamic countries. Saudi Arabia has welcomed some of the refugees, but other Arab states are denying entry to most of these people. These nations have incredible wealth, mostly because of their oil industries, but they would rather build mosques abroad than welcome these refugees into their territory.

Source: Catholic Online

French forces brace for civil unrest

French security forces are bracing for the eventuality of civil unrest.

The army has made contingency plans for the “reappropriation of national territory”, meaning to win back control of neighbourhoods where the population become hostile to the security forces and where guns are easily obtainable, according to the source.

“There are a lot of alienated and angry fourth-generation immigrant kids in the suburbs and the prospect of radicalisation is increasingly likely,” the source said.

“The idea that attacks like the one on the train are carried out by individuals acting on their own is not credible. We’re dealing with highly-organised networks of militant Islamists embarked on a campaign of violence and determined to intensify it.”

Kalashnikov automatic rifles — used by the train gunman and Islamist terrorists who killed 17 people in Paris in January — and anti-tank missiles are now obtainable in France.

Many were smuggled in from the former Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars in the 1990s. More weapons have come in from Libya, the sources said, adding that organised crime and terrorist groups were working together to procure them.

Fears of a possible missile strike on a passenger airliner or a September 11-style attack, according to sources close to French intelligence, are also mentioned.

“Airlines have been warned of a possible attack on a plane with an anti-tank missile,” a source told The Telegraph. “But pilots are unsure how to take evasive action.”

After Friday’s thwarted attempt to massacre passengers on an Amsterdam-Paris train and a series of terrorist attacks and attempted killings in France this year, President François Hollande warned the nation to prepare for more violence, considered inevitable as the Islamist threat grows.

Source: The Telegraph

Ex-Saffer foils terror attack on French train

When a gunman armed with an AK-47 attempted to attack a packed passenger train in a terror attack in France, Chris Norman, 62 – who grew up in South Africa – thought he was going to die.

But he was determined to die fighting, and therefore “sprang into action”.

Ayoub El-Khazzani, 25, has been arrested by French police after opening fire in the packed high-speed train. But his attack was cut short by four men, including Norman and Americans Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler.

The train was travelling between Amsterdam and Paris on Friday and the attack happened shortly after the gunman emerged from the toilet inside carriage 12. One man was hit in the neck by a bullet as terrified passengers and staff fled. Three people were injured in the attack, including Stone.

The men “tackled, beat up and hogtied the suspect”. Besides the assault rifle, they also confiscated a Luger pistol, ammunition and a box cutter.

Norman said he was scared when they decided to tackle the would-be attacker but carried on, with the idea of stopping him.

He spoke to French media after the eventful train journey.

“My first reaction was to sit down and hide. Then I heard one guy, an American, say, ‘go get him’. Then I heard another American saying, ‘don’t you do that buddy’, or something like that.

“I think that was it. So then I decided it was perhaps the only time or only chance to take on the terrorist.”

Norman said the man had extra magazines for the AK-47 and he thought he was going to die.

“My thoughts were I’m probably going to die anyway. I thought I’d rather die being active, trying to take him down than sitting in the corner and being shot. But once you start moving you are not afraid anymore,” he said.

Norman lives in France and has a UK passport. He was born in Uganda and grew up in South Africa before starting his own IT consultancy business in 2012.

Source: IOL

No more Mohammed cartoons says Charlie Hebdo

The editor of Charlie Hebdo has said that cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed will no longer be published by the French satirical magazine, six months after 12 people were killed in an attack on its Paris offices by Islamist gunmen.

The magazine has frequently provoked outrage among Muslims by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, whose image is considered blasphemous by many followers of Islam. Its “survivors’ issue”, the first to be published after January’s attack, featured a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed on the front page.

But Charlie Hebdo editor Laurent Sourisseau, also known by his pen name “Riss”, told German magazine Stern that the Prophet Mohammed would no longer appear in the magazine’s pages.

“We have drawn Mohammed to defend the principle that one can draw whatever they want. We’ve done our job. We have defended the right to caricature,” Sourisseau said.

“We still believe that we have the right to criticise all religions,” he added.

Riss took over as Charlie Hebdo’s editor in the wake of January attack – which he survived by playing dead – taking over the role from Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, who was killed in the massacre.

Riss’s announcement comes after one of the magazine’s most prominent cartoonists Rénald “Luz” Luzier said in April he would no longer draw the Prophet Mohammed as it “no longer interests me”.

Luz, who drew the front cover of the “survivors’ issue”, quit the magazine altogether a month later.

Source: France24

Sydney’s ‘Reclaim Australia’ rally against Islam

Five people have been arrested over sporadic violence in Sydney, where right-wing activists from the ‘Reclaim Australia’ movement held a protest with police trying to keep them separated from a counter-rally by pro-tolerance protesters.

Some 150 Reclaim Australia activists gathered in Sydney’s Martin Place to protest against what they called the Islamization of the country, some of them wearing Spartan outfits and carrying Eureka flags, controversial symbols of rebellion in Australia.

Separated by a police-enforced buffer zone, a counter-protest standing for multiculturalism and against Islamophobia gathered.

The five were arrested over violent clashes between the two rallies, AAP reported. Police said at least two of the arrests may lead to charges.

“We respect your right to protest and police will facilitate that and work to support peaceful demonstration on every occasion. But those who wish to come and commit offences, intimidate or be offensive will be arrested,” NSW Assistant Commissioner Alan Clarke told SBS News.

Similar pro and counter-rallies were held in other Australian cities on Sunday, including Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Canberra, with no major incidents reported. In Mackay, Federal Coalition MP George Christensen addressed a Reclaim Australia rally, calling for action to defend the nation’s values.

“Our voice says we will not surrender, we will not sit idly by and watch the Australian culture and the Australian lifestyle that we love, and that is envied around the world … we are not going to see that surrendered and handed over to those who hate us for who we are and what we stand for,” he said.

Police said the Sunday rallies demonstrated a “good level of compliance” by the protesters, an improvement compared to the altercations of Saturday’s rally in Melbourne, when police had to use pepper spray to maintain order.

Reclaim Australia says it stands for maintaining Australia’s national identity and is against the spread of Islam in the country. Their critics consider them racist and accuse of neo-Nazi leanings.

“Claiming to be a patriot is one thing and being too patriot[ic] is another. We [Muslims] are a 2 percent minority here, so to say that radical Islam is taking over Australia is completely false, there’s no reality to it,” Waseem Razvi, president of Australia’s Islamic Research and Education Academy, told RT.

“A real patriot would not stand against minorities, but stand alongside the minorities, respecting the constitution and respecting the multicultural spirit of Australia,” he said.

The weekend protests come during this year’s Eid al-fitr festivities, when Muslims celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Tunisia faces massive tourist losses after beach attack

Tunisia expects to lose at least $515-million (R6,3-billion) this year, or about a quarter of its estimated annual tourism earnings, following last Friday’s attack on a beach hotel that killed 39 people, mostly British holidaymakers.

The attack by an ISIS gunman on the Imperial Marhaba beach hotel in the popular resort town of Sousse came just months after militants attacked the Bardo museum in Tunis, killing 21 people, and delivering a blow to the country’s vital tourism industry.

“The attack had a great impact on the economy, the losses will be large,” Tourism Minister Salma Loumi told reporters late on Monday, giving a preliminary estimate from the Sousse attack.

The North African country earned $1,95bn in revenues from tourism last year.

The sector makes up seven percent of its GDP and is a major source of foreign currency and employment for Tunisia.

Loumi said the government planned to end a visitors’ tax and also to review debt relief for hotel operators as ways to help sustain the industry.

The government has said 1,000 more armed tourism police will patrol hotels and tourism sites and the army reserves will also be drafted in to beef up protection.

Authorities have arrested suspects tied to the attacker, but have given few details.

More than 3,000 Tunisians have also left to fight for militant Islamist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and some have threatened to return to carry out attacks in their homeland.

Source: Reuters

French Muslim leader asks for 5000 churches to be turned into mosques

France’s top Muslim official has suggested turning empty or abandoned Catholic churches into mosques, saying as many as 5,000 are needed for the country’s Muslim population – the largest in Europe.

“It’s a delicate issue, but why not?” Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris and the president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, told Europe 1 radio on Monday.

There are currently about 2,500 mosques in France with another 300 under construction, but the number falls short of what is needed, he said. With roughly 5 million Muslims in France, at least 5,000 mosques are needed, Boubakeur said.

During the interview with French radio he gave an example of the transition of a church into a mosque in Clermont-Ferrand, which was welcomed by the local religious community. The church had been abandoned for more than 30 years and the building was given to the Muslim community in 2012.

“It’s the same God, these are neighboring rites, fraternal, and I think that Muslims and Christians can coexist and live together,” he said.

It’s not the first time the lack of places of worship for millions of Muslims has been brought up in France. In April, Boubakeur called for doubling the number of mosques.

His remarks were welcomed by the Christian community as a “legitimate” demand.

“Muslims should, like Christians and Jews, be able to practice their religion,” Monseigneur Ribadeau-Dumas, spokesperson for the Bishops’ Conference of France, told French radio station Europe 1.

However, this suggestion has been criticized by the National Front party. In April, Florian Philippot, its vice-president, argued France doesn’t need more, because “100 percent of places of radicalization are mosques.”

The party’s leader Marine Le Pen called to stop the construction of new mosques in March.

“We must today freeze the construction of new mosques while we verify the origin of their financing,” she said in an interview to France 24.

The question of building closer ties with the Muslim community was discussed at the talks between the French government and about 150 Muslim leaders in Paris on Monday.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stressed there was no link between extremism and Islam.

“We must say all of this is not Islam,” he said. “The hate speech, anti-Semitism that hides behind anti-Zionism and hate for Israel… the self-proclaimed imams in our neighborhoods and our prisons who are promoting violence and terrorism…

“Islam still provokes misunderstandings, prejudices, and is rejected by some citizens,” he added. “Yet Islam is here to stay in France. It’s the second largest religious group in our country.”

The first conference between the government and Muslim community leaders comes five months after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher store jihadist attacks in Paris that killed 17 people.

The terrorists responsible for the attacks “belong to a different world than we do,” said Boubakeur, speaking at the conference. – RT.COM

Wilders to show cartoons of prophet on TV

Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders said Wednesday he plans to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on Dutch television after Parliament refused to display them.

Wilders said he would show the cartoons during television airtime reserved for political parties, in a move likely to offend Muslims since Islamic tradition holds that any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is blasphemous.

Political parties in the Netherlands get a small amount of airtime each year and broadcasting authorities have no say in what the parties show. Wilders said the broadcast would likely take place in the next few weeks, but an exact date has yet to be determined.

The announcement came a month after Wilders gave a speech at a contest in Garland, Texas, for cartoon depictions of Muhammad. Shortly after Wilders left the event, it was targeted by two men with pistols and assault rifles. Security guards shot and killed the attackers.

Wilders, whose Freedom Party holds 12 of the 150 seats in Parliament’s lower house, told The Associated Press he wants to air cartoons from the Texas competition to support people “who use the pen and not the sword.”

Wilders is no stranger to pushing the boundaries of free speech and targeting Islam. He has lived under round-the-clock protection since 2004 because of death threats.

He was acquitted in 2011 of hate speech as judges said that his anti-Islam rhetoric came in the context of a fierce national debate about immigration and multiculturalism.

Wilders is again facing prosecution for hate speech over a chant last year in which he asked his supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands and they shouted back “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!”

Source: AP

Interpol warns that ISIS is gaining ground

A growing number of extremist groups from Africa to southeast Asia are shifting their allegiance to the Islamic State group, leading to greater risks for “cross-pollination” among conflicts beyond Syria and Iraq, the head of Interpol said Friday.

Juergen Stock cited this shift as an emerging trend at a UN Security Council meeting along with changing travel methods being used by foreign fighters seeking to join groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Stock was a keynote speaker at a meeting attended by half a dozen ministers including US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to assess progress in implementing a US-sponsored resolution adopted last September requiring all countries to prevent the recruitment and transport of would-be foreign fighters preparing to join extremist groups.

On Friday, the Security Council adopted a presidential statement calling for a significant increase in border controls, improved cooperation at all levels “including preventing terrorists from exploiting technology, communications and resources.”

Johnson said the United States will be developing a new passenger data-screening and analysis system within the next 12 months which will be made available to the international community at no cost for both commercial and government organizations to use.

In a report obtained by The Associated Press on April 1, the panel of experts monitoring UN sanctions against al-Qaeda said the number of fighters leaving home to join al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group in Iraq, Syria and other countries has spiked to more than 25,000 from over 100 nations. The panel said its analysis indicated the number of “foreign terrorist fighters” worldwide increased by 71 percent between mid-2014 and March 2015.

Source: AP