Bold Statement From Muslim Academic

Mohammed Wattad, PhD

Only Muslims Can Change the World's View of Islam
- Mohammed Wattad, PhD

The cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammad were drawn by Western journalists for Western audiences in a society grounded in democratic rights and freedoms, tantamount among these the right to free speech. And what is the essence of free speech if not the right to express disputed and even offensive views?
    
Muslims are well aware of the rights and freedoms afforded to them in democratic societies, and this is precisely the reason many of them leave their Islamic homelands for the West. It is therefore with the utmost hypocrisy, audacity and impertinence that Muslims living in democratic countries react to criticism of their faith with threats, vandalism and violence. Their sensitivities notwithstanding, if Muslims are to live among Westerners, it is they who must conform to the norms of the land, not vice versa.
    
Examples abound of the Christian, Jewish, Hindu and other faiths being the subject of gross insult. Yet while these expressions have sparked outrage and anger, they are met with words in the marketplace of ideas. Only among Muslims are words of criticism met by the sword. This proves exactly what the Dutch and French cartoonists sought to depict: the moral, educational and cultural bankruptcy of those who act barbarically in the name of Islam. The cartoons are not concerned with Islam, but with the way some Muslims exercise Islam. They merely reflected existing images created by extremists themselves.
    
If this image is wrong, then we Muslims bear the burden to show otherwise. Terrorism today stems primarily from Muslims in the name of Islam. For these images to change, Muslims must be at the forefront of countering Islamic radicalization in the Middle East and in our adopted countries. 
The writer is a visiting assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Irvine.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Obama's MidEast Dance

Israel takes action, Obama be damned - Caroline Glick

 

Israel’s reported strike January 18 on a joint Iranian-Hezbollah convoy driving on the Syrian Golan Heights was one of the most strategically significant events to have occurred in Israel’s neighborhood in recent months.

[I]t is clear that in one fell swoop the air force decapitated the Iranian and Hezbollah operational command in Syria. According to a report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the Iranian losses included three generals.

The fact that the men were willing to risk exposure by traveling together along the border with Israel indicates how critical the front is for the regime in Tehran. It also indicates that in all likelihood, they were planning an imminent attack against Israel.

 

Iran’s willingness to expose its forces and Hezbollah forces also indicates something else. It indicates that they believe that there is a force deterring Israel from attacking them.

From the Golan Heights to Gaza, from Yemen and Iraq to Latin America to Nantanz and Arak, Iran is boldly advancing its nuclear and imperialist agenda. As Charles Krauthammer noted, the nations of the Middle East allied with the US are sounding the alarm. Earlier this week, during Obama’s visit with the new Saudi King Salman, he got an earful from the monarch regarding the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Israel’s January 18 strike on Iranian and Hezbollah commanders in Syria showed Israel’s strategy wisdom and independent capacity. Israel can and will take measures to defend its critical security interests. It has the intelligence gathering capacity to identify and strike at targets in real time.

But it also showed the constraints Israel is forced to operate under in its increasingly complex and dangerous strategic environment.

Due to the US administration’s commitment to turning a blind eye to Iran’s advances and the destabilizing role it plays everywhere it gains power, Israel can do little more than carry out precision attacks against high value targets. The flipside of the administration’s refusal to see the dangers, and so enable Iran’s territorial expansion and its nuclear progress, is its determination to ensure that Israel does nothing to prevent those dangers from growing – whether along its borders or at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

[Jerusalem Post]

 

Do We Really Mean "Never Again"? - Charles Krauthammer

Amid the pledges of "never again" on Tuesday's 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, anti-Semitism has returned to Europe with a vengeance. It has become routine. The rise of European anti-Semitism is, in reality, just a return to the norm. While the shame of the Holocaust created a temporary anomaly wherein anti-Semitism became socially unacceptable, the hiatus is over. Jew-hatred is back.
    

For America, Europe and the moderate Arabs, there are powerful reasons having nothing to do with Israel for trying to prevent an apocalyptic, fanatically anti-Western clerical regime in Tehran from getting the bomb: Iranian hegemony, nuclear proliferation (including to terror groups) and elemental national security. For Israel, however, the threat is of a different order. Direct, immediate and mortal.
    

The Iranian bomb is a national security issue, but it is also a uniquely Jewish issue because of Israel's situation as the only state on earth overtly threatened with extinction, facing a potential nuclear power overtly threatening that extinction.

 

Want to truly honor the dead? Show solidarity with the living - Israel and its 6 million Jews. It took Nazi Germany seven years to kill 6 million Jews. It would take a nuclear Iran one day. 

(Washington Post)

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UPDATES:

Obama Agreed to 80 Percent of Iran's Demands

Israeli officials told Israel Channel 10 TV they are convinced the Obama administration "has given the Iranians 80% of what they want" in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. Jerusalem officials appear alarmed at the prospect that the U.S. will soon strike a deal that will leave the Iranian regime with a "breakout capacity." Iran will be permitted to keep over 7,000 centrifuges, enough to produce enough enriched material to sprint toward the bomb within a matter of months.
    

These developments have apparently fueled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's sense of urgency in traveling to Washington and addressing Congress. "We are in a continuous struggle with Iran which is opening new fronts against us, which is engaged in terrorism in the Middle East and throughout the world," Netanyahu said.

(Jerusalem Post)

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Debating the U.S. Approach to Iran - Michael Doran (Mosaic)

 

• Instead of trying to paper over the disagreement, Obama has done everything in his power to advertise it. In making his personal rift with Netanyahu the subject of intense public debate, the White House means to direct attention away from the strategic rift between them - and from the fact that the entire Israeli elite, regardless of political orientation, as well as much of the U.S. Congress, regards the president's conciliatory approach to Iran as profoundly misguided.
• The president is depicting his congressional critics as irresponsible warmongers. He would have us believe that there are only two options: his undeclared detente with Iran and yet another war in the Middle East. This is a false choice. It ignores the policy that every president since Jimmy Carter has pursued till now: vigorous containment on all fronts, not just in the nuclear arena.
• As a matter of ideology as much as strategy, Obama believes that integrating Iran into the international diplomatic and economic system is a much more effective method of moderating its aggressive behavior than applying more pressure. He appears also to believe that his method is working.
• In the meantime, the seasoned thugs in Tehran grow stronger and bolder: ever closer to nuclear breakout capacity, ever more confident in their hegemonic objectives. At minuscule and temporary inconvenience to themselves, they have not only reaped the economic and diplomatic rewards pursuant to participation in the interim agreement, but also fully preserved their nuclear ambitions and the means of achieving them.

• Having bested the most powerful country on earth in their drive for success on their terms, they have good reason to be confident.
  
  The writer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council.

ADDITIONAL UPDATES:

Speech Gives Israel a Seat at Iran Talks - Seth Lipsky

Why doesn't Israel have a seat at the table in the main negotiations with Iran, which is openly declaring its intention to destroy the Jewish state? It's one thing to parse the fine points of etiquette with respect to who gets to invite the prime minister to address a joint meeting of Congress. But what do those who want to exclude Netanyahu from addressing Congress have to say about Israel's absence at the P5+1? This whole charade with Iran is being conducted in exclusion of the very state against whom Iran intends to use the nuclear weapons it covets.
    
The idea that either the Speaker inviting Israel to speak to the Congress or the Congress preparing contingency sanctions is a violation of some kind of diplomatic tradition is bizarre, given more than 50 years of congressional involvement in arms-control talks, as detailed in the Wall Street Journal.
(Ha'aretz)


The White House Is Lonelier on Iran - Walter Russell Mead 

• The longer the President and his top aides keep pretending that critics of his Iran policy have no concerns that are worth taking seriously, the more they feed the narrative that the White House is in over its head on Iran - that it has lost sight of some important considerations in a headlong drive to get a deal.
• The gravest danger to the balance of power in the Middle East today is Iran's push to consolidate its domination of the swath of territory from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon. Instead of coming down like a ton of bricks on Iran's regional ambitions, the administration appears to be edging toward embracing Iran as a useful partner against ISIS and its fellow travelers. A nuclear deal that lifts the sanctions without addressing the question of Iran's regional ambitions would have the effect of greatly strengthening Iran's hand.
• Iran has consistently cast its quest for regional power as a movement of "Islamic Resistance" against the U.S. and its sidekick in Jerusalem. Iran and its allies have consistently taken the hardest possible line against both the U.S. and Israel. It would seem that the larger Iran looms in the region, the more it will need the image of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism to legitimate its position. Why does it makes sense to think that a stronger Iran will choose alignment with the U.S. when its own political interests would benefit from a more anti-American posture?
• It is argued that moving to a less polarized relationship with Iran will accelerate a transition toward a more democratic and less theocratic regime within Iran. Certainly a democratic revolution in Iran would be a welcome development. But Americans generally are bad at predicting when revolutions will take place in foreign countries, and we are worse at predicting the course those revolutions take once under way.
• Finally, there is the question of our current unhappy allies. In pursuit of a new understanding with Iran, the White House has put severe stress on our existing relationships with countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel. As a result, Iran has been able to watch America's regional position and alliance network weaken without lifting a finger or spending a dime. Under the circumstances, it looks to many as if the U.S. is dumping its old allies without securing a replacement.
• If the administration has a serious case for how its Iran policy will leave the U.S. with a stronger and more useful regional alliance network than it now has, that case has not been made. The bits and pieces of the strategy that we know about don't make sense, and the President and his team don't seem to understand how weak and vapid the case they make to the public really is.
  
  The writer is Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and Professor of American foreign policy at Yale University. He served as Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations until 2010.

(American Interest)

ISIS & The Iran Cauldron

U.S. Policy in Syria: A Recipe to Contain, Not Defeat, ISIS 
- Andrew J. Tabler

The Assad regime's tacit agreement to avoid firing on coalition strike aircraft - juxtaposed with long delays in the Obama administration's train-and-equip program for the Syrian opposition and the president's October 2014 letter to Iran's Supreme Leader on cooperation against ISIS - is creating widespread perceptions that the U.S. is heading into a de facto alliance with Assad and Tehran regarding the jihadists.

If Washington continues this policy, it will merely contain ISIS, not "defeat" or "destroy" the group. Beyond the terrible optics of assisting a president who has used chemical weapons and Scud missiles against his own people, the Assad regime is financially and militarily crippled and therefore unable to retake and hold areas currently controlled by ISIS.

Instead of allowing the regime's strength to grow, Washington should weaken both Assad and ISIS by encouraging the fight between them, weakening Iran's foreign legions and the jihadists at the same time. 
The writer is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute. 
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy)


Iranian Weapons of War America Should Fear - Zachary Keck

With the possible exception of North Korea, no country in the post-Cold War era has sought to challenge the U.S. as much as Iran. Tehran has never missed an opportunity to antagonize the U.S. and limit its influence.
   
In any conventional military conflict, Iran wouldn't stand a chance against the U.S. armed forces. To compensate, Iran pursues a deterrent-based military doctrine premised on three types of capabilities: an expansive ballistic missile arsenal, asymmetric naval warfare (particularly the threat of closing down the Strait of Hormuz), and ties to non-state militant groups.
   
Perhaps Iran's greatest deterrent threat is its ability to threaten oil shipments in the Strait of Hormuz, which roughly 20% of global oil supplies must transverse on their way to markets. Iran has at least twenty 150-ton Ghadir-class midget submarines that would be especially deadly in any conflict. As Chris Harmer, an expert on Iran's military at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), explains, "The quietest submarine in the world is one that rests on a sandy seabed. That is how the Iranians would use the Ghadir - get it out of port, sink to the bottom of the shallow Persian Gulf, rest on the sandy bottom, and wait for a target to come to it."
   
With the benefit of hindsight, Iran's decision to infiltrate Lebanon seems like pure strategic genius, as Hizbullah has been the gift that just keeps giving. Time and again Hizbullah has proven to be the most versatile and usable "weapon of war" in Iran's arsenal. Iran used Hizbullah to carry out terrorist attacks like the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and successfully attacked Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012.
(American Interest)
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Iran Ascending

The Long Arm: Iran Is Expanding Its Influence Abroad

Officials in Tehran are not shy about their aim of spreading influence abroad, nor of their apparent success. Tehran can claim, with only a pinch of hubris, to run three Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut. This week it may have added a fourth: Sana'a, Yemen's capital.
     
Moreover, an Israeli strike on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights that killed Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, an Iranian general, exposed Iranian meddling in another part of the Middle East. To its critics, Iran alarmingly holds sway from the Mediterranean Sea to the Fertile Crescent and the Gulf of Aden. "The Iranians are experts at taking advantage of chaos," says Shimon Shapira, a retired military man now at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. 
(Economist-UK)


Iran's Emerging Empire - Charles Krauthammer

Iran's march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked in Washington. For the Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs, this is a nightmare. They're engaged in a titanic regional struggle with Iran. And they are losing - losing Yemen, losing Lebanon, losing Syria and watching post-U.S.-withdrawal Iraq come under increasing Iranian domination.

The nightmare would be hugely compounded by Iran going nuclear. 
(Washington Post)


Fact Checker: Has Iran's Nuclear Program Been "Halted" and Its Nuclear Stockpile "Reduced"?
- Glenn Kessler

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 20, 2015, President Obama said: "Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we've halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material."
     
Olli Heinonen, who headed the IAEA's safeguards section, said, "It is true that 20%-enriched uranium stocks have decreased, but Iran is still producing uranium enriched up to 5% uranium. The latter stocks have actually increased when you talk about stocks of UF6 [uranium hexafluoride] and other chemical compounds." Moreover, "it appears that the production of centrifuge components continues. Same with the Arak reactor. No new nuclear components have been installed, but it does not mean that the production of those came to halt."
     
David Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, said it was not correct that the 3.5%-enriched stock had been reduced; instead it has been converted from one form ("hexafluoride") to another ("oxide"), a step that he said was taken largely for cosmetic (political) purposes. As a practical matter, the conversion of 3.5% to oxide form would only add about two weeks to the break-out period, since Iran could reconvert it back into hexafluoride. 

In effect, the amount of nuclear material available to Iran has gone up "about a bomb's worth during the JPOA [interim agreement]," Albright said.
(Washington Post)


How Congress Can Use Its Leverage on Iran - David B. Rivkin Jr. & Lee A. Casey

Tehran's insistence that existing U.S. sanctions be lifted as part of a nuclear-weapons agreement gives U.S. lawmakers substantial leverage. Congress should insist that any Iranian agreement take the form of a treaty. The Constitution requires that treaties be made only with the advice and consent of the Senate.
     
Congress should pass legislation now clearly stating the parameters of an acceptable nuclear deal with Iran, emphasizing the need to eliminate any Iranian breakout capability. It should also put the Iranians and our allies on notice that, absent congressional approval, the president cannot deliver comprehensive and permanent relief from the existing sanctions statutes.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Mr. Rivkin is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
(Wall Street Journal)


UPDATES: 

Prime Minister Has "Sacred Duty" to Oppose Iran Deal that "Endangers Israel's Existence"
- Jacob Kornbluh

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer sought to reassure Americans that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no intention to disrespect President Barack Obama or intervene in American politics by accepting House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to address a joint session of Congress in March.
     
"There may be some people who believe that the Prime Minister of Israel should have declined an invitation to speak before the most powerful parliament in the world on an issue that concerns the future and survival of Israel. But we have learned from our history that the world becomes a more dangerous place for the Jewish people when the Jewish people are silent."
     
"The agreement that is being discussed today is not an agreement that would dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons capability, but rather one that could leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state. That is an agreement that could endanger the very existence of the State of Israel....The Jewish people are a people who have survived all the evil that history has thrown at us. And we will survive the evil that we face today. But we will not do it by bowing our heads and by hoping that the storm will pass." 
(JP Updates)


New Saudi Ruler Sees Iran Threat - Mohamad Bazzi

No one should doubt that King Salman is as focused on the perceived threat from Iran as King Abdullah was. In a conversation a week ago with six visiting U.S. senators, the new ruler emphasized the threat from a nuclear-armed Iran, said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). 
(Politico)


Netanyahu: "I Am Obligated to Make Every Effort to Prevent Iran from Achieving Nuclear Weapons Aimed at Israel"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Cabinet: "In the coming weeks, the major powers are liable to reach a framework agreement with Iran, an agreement that is liable to leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, which would endanger - first and foremost - the existence of the State of Israel. This is the same Iran that has taken over Lebanon and Syria and is now taking over Yemen and Iraq. This is the same Iran that is preparing an active front against us both on the Golan Heights and in southern Lebanon. This same Iran cannot advance toward nuclear weapons."
    
"As Prime Minister of Israel, I am obligated to make every effort in order to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons that would be aimed at the State of Israel. This effort is worldwide and I will go anywhere I am invited in order to enunciate the State of Israel's position and in order to defend its future and its existence." 
(Prime Minister's Office)


Secret Israeli-Saudi Ties Likely to Continue - Ariel Zilber

The tacit security and intelligence cooperation that has come to characterize Israel's clandestine relationship with Saudi Arabia is likely to remain intact following [the] passing of King Abdullah.
     
"The changes that the Middle East has experienced in recent years have created a set of joint interests between the two countries," said Dr. Michal Yaari, an expert on Saudi foreign policy and a lecturer at the Open University. "The biggest enemy for both countries is Iran, and there are also the radical terror groups like ISIS that threaten the regional order in the Middle East. It is this overall framework that has created the conditions for cooperation between Jerusalem and Riyadh."
(Jerusalem Post)


Time to Take It to Iran - Dennis Ross, Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh

American diplomats should not be afraid to walk away from the table and even suspend the talks should they continue to meet an unyielding Iran. They need to clearly signal that we don't need an agreement as much as they do and that we are prepared to create conditions for international support for increased pressure.
(Politico)
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Additional UPDATE:

About that Invitation to Address Congress - Elliott Abrams

• When Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last addressed a joint session of Congress in 2011, Walter Russell Mead wrote a remarkable comment on the speech Netanyahu made and the reception he received. "Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth....Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-American."
• Obama administration officials who are trying to argue that Netanyahu's invitation from Speaker Boehner is outrageous and political (just a few days after the president got British prime minister Cameron to lobby Congress directly) will lose the argument.
• Iran's nuclear program is one of the most significant national security issues we face and an even larger issue for Israel.
• I think it's fine that Obama will not see Netanyahu so close to the Israeli election; that's a good practice in general and avoids the inference of U.S. intervention in a foreign electoral contest.
• But the White House's whining about Boehner's invitation is amateurish, and for the reasons Mead explained it will persuade few Americans beyond the Beltway.
• Given the situation in the Middle East and the state of nuclear negotiations with Iran (where the U.S. has abandoned almost every red line it ever set), it's no wonder that Netanyahu wants to speak about Iran and that the Speaker wants to hear him.
  
  The writer is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

(Council on Foreign Relations)
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Dem Spits Fire At Obama on Iran

Senator Menendez attacks President Obama

During a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ranking Member Senator Robert Menendez (D -NJ) said “the more I hear from the administration, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.” Menendez’s comments come a day after President Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address, in which the President vowed that he would veto any conditional sanctions legislation.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said that “we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program.” However, many experts say the Iranian nuclear program has not been halted.
[The Israel Project]
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Fatal Attraction: U.S. Engagement Strategy - Aaron David Miller

As long as Iran's mullahcracy and security establishment continue to see Iran as a revolutionary Islamic power at home and abroad, the chances of an engagement strategy transforming the U.S.-Iran relationship look pretty bleak. Indeed, perhaps the greatest danger is that a deal really won't diminish Tehran's determination to remain a screwdriver's turn away from a nuclear weapon.
     
And if the administration is too eager for an agreement, it will find itself with the worst of all possible worlds - with an emboldened Iran freed from sanctions and international pressure, untransformed, unrepentant, and in a stronger, not weaker, position to challenge U.S. interests in a turbulent Middle East. 
The writer is vice president for new initiatives at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
(Foreign Policy)
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France's 'No-Go' Zones: Fact or Fiction?

These stickers were illegally placed in neighborhoods in the United Kingdom

European 'No-Go' Zones: Fact or Fiction? - Soeren Kern

The jihadist attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French magazine known for lampooning Islam, has cast a spotlight on so-called no-go zones in France and other European countries.

No-go zones are Muslim-dominated neighborhoods that are largely off limits to non-Muslims due to a variety of factors, including the lawlessness and insecurity that pervades a great number of these areas. Host-country authorities have effectively lost control over many no-go zones and are often unable or unwilling to provide even basic public aid, such as police, fire fighting and ambulance services, out of fear of being attacked by Muslim youth.

Muslim enclaves in European cities are also breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism and pose a significant threat to Western security.

Europe's no-go zones are the by-product of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged Muslim immigrants to create parallel societies and remain segregated from — rather than become integrated into — their European host nations.

The problem of no-go zones is well documented, but multiculturalists and their politically correct supporters vehemently deny that they exist. Some are now engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit and even silence those who draw attention to the issue.

Consider Carol Matlack, an American writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, who recently penned a story — entitled "Debunking the Myth of Muslim-Only Zones in Major European Cities" — in which she claims that no-go zones are nothing more than an "urban legend" that is "demonstrably untrue." She then goes on to ridicule those who disagree with her.

The American cable television channel Fox News has also issued at least four apologies for referring to Muslim no-go zones in Europe, after one commentator erroneously claimed that the entire city of Birmingham, England, was Muslim. Had he simply said that "parts" of Birmingham are Muslim, he would have been correct.

Despite such politically correct denials, Muslim no-go zones are a well-known fact of life in many parts of Europe.

Fabrice Balanche, a well-known French Islam scholar who teaches at the University of Lyon, recently told Radio Télévision Suisse: "You have territories in France such as Roubaix, such as northern Marseille, where police will not step foot, where the authority of state is completely absent, where mini Islamic states have been formed."

French politician Franck Guiot wrote that parts of Évry, a township in the southern suburbs of Paris, are no-go zones where police forces cannot go for fear of being attacked. He said that politicians seeking to maintain "social peace" were prohibiting the police from using their weapons to defend themselves.

The Socialist mayor of Amiens, Gilles Demailly, has referred to the Fafet-Brossolette district of the city as a "no-go zone" where "you can no longer order a pizza or get a doctor to come to the house." Europe 1, one of the leading broadcasters in France, has referred to Marseille as a "no-go zone" after the government was forced to deploy riot police, known as CRS, to confront warring Muslim gangs in the city. The French Interior Ministry said it was trying to "reconquer" 184 square kilometers (71 square miles) of Marseille that have come under the control of Muslim gangs.

The French newspaper Le Figaro has referred to downtown Perpignan as a "veritable no-go zone" where "aggression, antisocial behavior, drug trafficking, Muslim communalism, racial tensions and tribal violence" are forcing non-Muslims to move out. Le Figaro also reported that the Les Izards district of Toulouse was a no-go zone, where Arab drug trafficking gangs rule the streets in a climate of fear.

Separately, Le Figaro reported that large quantities of assault rifles are circulating in French no-go zones. "For a few hundred dollars you can buy Kalashnikovs," political scientist Sebastian Roché said. "The price of an iPhone!"

The newspaper France Soir published poll results showing that nearly 60% of French citizens are in favor of sending the army into troubled suburbs to restore order.

In August 2014, the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles (Contemporary Values) reported that "France has more than 750 areas of lawlessness" where the law of the French Republic no longer applies. Under the headline "Hell in France," the magazine said that many parts of France are experiencing a "dictatorship of riffraff" where police are "greeted by mortar fire" and are "forced to retreat by projectiles."

Separately, Valeurs Actuelles reported on the lawlessness in Trappes, a township located in the western suburbs of Paris, where radical Islam and endemic crime go hand in hand. "Criminals are pursued by Islamic fundamentalists to impose an alternative society, breaking links with the French Republic," according to local police commander Mohammed Duhan. It is not advisable to go there, he says, adding, "You will be spotted by so-called chauffeurs (lookouts for drug traffickers) and be stripped and smashed."

A graphic 20-minute documentary (in French) about the no-go zone in Clichy Montfermeil, a suburb of Paris, can be viewed here. At around the 3-minute mark, the video shows what happens when French police enter the area.

A 1.5 hour documentary (in French) produced by France's TF1 about Muslim gangs in Parisian no-go zones can be viewed here. A 50-minute documentary (in French) produced by France's TV3 about the no-go zones of Clos Saint-Lazare in northern Paris can be viewed here. A 45-minute documentary (in English) about the no-go zones of Marseilles can be viewed here.

A four-minute video of the most dangerous neighborhoods of France in 2014 can be viewed here. A three-and-a-half-minute video of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Greater Paris Metropolitan Area can be viewed here. A two-minute video of a no-go zone in Lille can be viewed here. A five-minute video about life in the suburbs of Lyon can be viewed here.

A 120-page research paper entitled "No-Go Zones in the French Republic: Myth or Reality?" documented dozens of French neighborhoods "where police and gendarmerie cannot enforce the Republican order or even enter without risking confrontation, projectiles, or even fatal shootings."

In October 2011, a landmark 2,200-page report, "Banlieue de la République" (Suburbs of the Republic) found that Seine-Saint-Denis and other Parisian suburbs are becoming "separate Islamic societies" cut off from the French state, and where Islamic Sharia law is rapidly displacing French civil law. The report said that Muslim immigrants are increasingly rejecting French values and instead are immersing themselves in radical Islam.

The report — which was commissioned by the influential French think tank, L'Institut Montaigne — was directed by Gilles Kepel, a highly respected political scientist and specialist in Islam, together with five other French researchers. The authors of the report showed that France — which now has 6.5 million Muslims (the largest Muslim population in European Union) — is on the brink of a major social explosion because of the failure of Muslims to integrate into French society.

The report also showed how the problem is being exacerbated by radical Muslim preachers, who are promoting the social marginalization of Muslim immigrants in order to create a parallel Muslim society in France that is ruled by Sharia law. The research was primarily carried out in the Seine-Saint-Denis townships of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two suburbs that were ground zero for Muslim riots in the fall of 2005, when Muslim mobs torched more than 9,000 cars.

A video showing a radical Islamic rally in Saint-Denis can be viewed here. A video showing radical Muslims commandeering a French bus amid screams of "Allahu Akbar!" (Allah is greater!) can be viewed here. A series of eight videos documenting Muslim street prayers in Paris can be viewed here. (Street prayers have now been outlawed.) A series of 25 videos documenting the Islamization of France can be viewed here.
[Gatestone Institute]
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UPDATE:

Does Europe Have No-go Zones? - Daniel Pipes, PhD

Comments by Steven Emerson on Fox News have prompted a heated debate over whether predominantly Muslim "no-go" zones exist in Europe.

[T]hose areas "are not full-fledged no-go zones" --- meaning places where the government had lost control of territory. No war lords dominate; Shari'a is not the law of the land. So, what are these places? A unique and as-yet un-named mix.

West European states can intervene anywhere and at any time in their sovereign territory. As the shoot-out in Verviers and the subsequent raids in Belgium suggest, their overwhelming advantage in force – including military, intelligence, and police – means they have not ceded control.

On the other hand, governments often choose not to impose their will on Muslim-majority areas, allowing them considerable autonomy, including in some cases the Shariah courts that Emerson mentioned. Alcohol and pork are effectively banned in these districts, polygamy and burqas commonplace, police enter only warily and in force, and Muslims get away with offences illegal for the rest of population.

The Rotherham, England, child sex scandal offers a powerful example. An official inquiry found that for sixteen years, 1997-2013, a ring of Muslim men sexually exploited – through abduction, rape, gang rape, trafficking, prostitution, torture – at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls as young as 11. The police received voluminous complaints from the girls' parents but did nothing; they could have acted, but chose not to. 

Another example, also British, was the so-called Operation Trojan Horse that flourished from 2007 until 2014, in which (again, according to an official inquiry), a group of school functionaries developed "a strategy to take over a number of schools in Birmingham and run them on strict Islamic principles."
What does one call Rotherham and Birmingham? They are not no-go zones, neither in terms of geography or sovereignty.

I know of no historical parallel, in which a majority population accepts the customs and even the criminality of a poorer and weaker immigrant community. The world has never seen anything comparable to the contemporary West's blend of achievement, timidity, and guilt, of hugely superior power matched by a deep reluctance to use it.

Instead of no-go zones, I propose semi-autonomous sectors, a term that emphasizes their indistinct and non-geographic nature – thus permitting a more accurate discussion of what is, arguably, West Europe's most acute problem.
[The Blaze]
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VIDEO UPDATE:

 

 

December 2015 UPDATE:

 

"No-go Zones" in Europe? - Daniel Pipes, PhD

 

My visits establish that non-Muslim civilians can usually enter majority-Muslim areas without fear. But things look very different from the governmental point of view. On a routine basis, firefighters, ambulance workers, and even social workers meet with hostility and violence. For example, days after I visited the Marseille slum, its residents shot at police preparing for a visit by the prime minister of France. Thus does it and its ilk represent a no-go zone for police, a place which government representatives enter only when heavily armed, in convoys, temporarily, and with a specific mission.

 

Whether or not Molenbeek, Rinkeby, and the Marseilles slum are no-go zones, then, depends on what aspect one choses to emphasize – their accessibility to ordinary visitors at ordinary times or their inaccessibility to government officials in times of tension. There are also no-go gradations, some places where attacks are more frequent and violent, others less so. However one sums up this complex situation – maybe partial-no-go zones? – they represent a great danger.

[Daily Caller]

 



The Fate of Palestinian Moderates

Professor Dajani posted this photo of his vandalized car on Facebook

Arsonists Torch Car of Palestinian Professor Who Led Auschwitz Trip    

The car belonging to Mohammed Dajani, the former Al-Quds University professor who led the first organized group trip of Palestinian university students to Auschwitz, was torched in Jerusalem over the weekend.
   
In 2007 Dajani founded Wasatia, a social and political movement based on concepts of moderation, pluralism, democracy and justice that he found in the Quran.
   
Following the March 2014 trip, he was denounced as a traitor and collaborator, and expelled from the Al-Quds University workers' union.
(Ha'aretz)
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Dem Nuclear Eruption Over Iran

Obama and Menendez Spar on Iran - Michael D. Shear

President Obama and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) traded sharp words over whether Congress should impose new sanctions on Iran while the administration is negotiating with Tehran about its nuclear program, according to two people who witnessed the exchange at the Senate Democratic Issues Conference in Baltimore. Obama vowed to veto legislation being drafted by Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) that would impose the sanctions before the multiparty talks are set to end this summer.
    
Obama said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain.

Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took "personal offense." Menendez said he had worked for more than 20 years to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and had always been focused on the long-term implications. He also warned that sanctions could not be imposed quickly if Congress waited to act and the talks failed.
(New York Times)
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Enough!

This week we are Jewish Hebdo - Rob Eshman

Muslim leaders issued a fatwa against Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten for 12 cartoons it published in 2005 depicting the prophet Muhammad. To say many Muslims found those cartoons offensive is an understatement: The Muslim world went nuts. The focus of most of its anger was one cartoon drawn by Kurt Westergaard that showed Muhammad with his turban drawn as a lit bomb. Riots broke out around the world against the cartoons, resulting in more than 200 deaths. The Danish papers’ editors were subject to ongoing death threats and Westergaard himself survived at least one assassination attempt. 

It was a big story about Islamic fundamentalism and the limits of free speech, but even though we ran a story about it, I chose not to print the cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb for a turban, even by way of illustration. I now see I was wrong. 

Last week, nine members of the brave current and former staff and affiliates of the French satiric magazine Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) paid with their lives for the right to offend, along with a maintenance worker and two police officers...

The outpouring of grief and outrage and solidarity resulted in the biggest rally in France since the end of World War II. Some 3.7 million people gathered in peaceful rallies of support on the streets of Paris and throughout France, Europe and even at Los Angeles City Hall. They made no demands and there was no violence, but they sent a single, loud message: Enough. 

Enough tiptoeing around terrorists’ sensibilities. Enough kowtowing to the craziest elements among us. Enough pretending that Israel or Israel’s policies in the West Bank or Gaza are somehow the cause of the dysfunction in the Muslim world. Enough thinking that attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions are only a Jewish problem. Enough thinking that it’s OK to mock Christianity or Jews, but not, God forbid, Islam. Enough. 

It’s OK to mock everybody and everything. No, it’s not just OK: It’s a matter of life and death. That’s why this week we reprinted the covers from Charlie Hebdo on jewishjournal.com and in these pages, along with essays on the essential importance of satire. And that’s why we changed our masthead this week, for the first time in the paper’s nearly three decades. This week, we are not Jewish Journal. We are Jewish Hebdo. 

The events of the past week are yet more proof that the world is in the midst of a long and unfinished struggle against Islamic extremism. All of us who want to live in a free, tolerant society — Muslims, Jews, Christians and all the rest — must find ways to fight back against suppression whenever and wherever we can. If the extremists declare some goofy cartoons of Muhammad as their battleground, then those cartoons must become our battleground. We must defend them, if not on their merits, then on the right of artists in a free society to draw what they want and of publishers to distribute those images. We now see what happens when we cede any freedoms out of fear of retribution or of offending religious sensibilities — the extremists claim our refusal as victory and find new victims to intimidate. By taking up the cause of publishing these so-called offensive works, we are defending not just law, but also morality. We are saying that nothing — no cartoon, no blasphemy, no joke, no satire — is more offensive than the taking of innocent human lives. All humans have a right to offend and to take offense, but never to take a life just because they feel offended. 

Fanaticism is the most dangerous -ism, and its iteration in the Muslim world no longer can be disguised as the righteous reaction against oppression in Palestine or discrimination in France or blasphemy in Denmark.  It is a disease that has taken root in a great religion, and it must be rooted out.
[Jewish Journal]
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UPDATE:

Israel's French Immigrants -Naomi Zeveloff

As French Jews in Israel watched the overwhelming show of solidarity against terrorism by French citizens following the recent attacks in Paris, many spoke of feeling alienated rather than comforted by the outpouring.

France, they say, would never have staged the huge demonstration it did on January 11 had the attacks targeted Jews alone.
[The Forward]
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Will The West Now Rally Against Jihad?

A Watershed Moment? - David Horovitz

Now that the marchers have all gone home, what are the French actually going to do about the mounting challenge of Islamist terrorism?

Does anybody seriously believe, for instance, that France is about to launch a crackdown on Islamist groupings at its higher-education institutions, or devote serious resources to investigating potential incitement at local mosques? Are France and the rest of Europe about to introduce passenger profiling at EU entry points, the way Israel does? Is the EU set to sanction Turkey for facilitating the flow of radicalized European Muslims to and from the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq?
   
Do the last few days of Islamist murder in France constitute a watershed moment in the Western battle against Islamic extremism? I fear not.
(Times of Israel)


Paris: A Passing Episode? - Yoram Schweitzer & Oded Eran

The shock that has gripped France will probably wane as time passes, as will the urgency assigned to effective handling of the danger originating on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq that threatens Western democracies.

The need to take up the challenge will be postponed to a time when the leaders of Western countries have no choice but to deal with it directly, on a broad scale, and perhaps violently.

Presumably only a chain of exceptional events, i.e., showcase terrorist attacks that cause a large number of victims, will unequivocally highlight the risk incurred in not stepping up the military struggle against the challenge to the West posed by the Islamic State.
(Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University)
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UPDATES:

Will EU condemn France, Belgium for excessive use of force

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman took a jab at the Europeans Union:
"I wonder if the EU will condemn the Belgium and French governments for excessive use of force," he wrote on his Facebook page. "I wonder if they will call on them to negotiate with terrorists," he quipped.

The comments join a long string of instances in which Lieberman slammed the EU for what he perceives as an anti-Israel bias among EU nations.
[YNet News]
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Say It Like It Is - Thomas L. Friedman

When I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won't go to pay for this?
   
When you don't call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by al-Qaeda in Paris, and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We've entered the theater of the absurd.
   
I would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence isn't coming out of their faith community.
(New York Times)
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