In this mailing:
- Soeren Kern: Britain: "Rape Jihad" Against Children
- Ali Salim: U.S. in the Middle East: Good Intentions, Terrible Results
- Douglas Murray: Abu Qatada and the New Standard of "Rights"
Britain: "Rape Jihad" Against Children
by Soeren Kern
July 11, 2013 at 5:00 am
July 11, 2013 at 5:00 am
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"As
one police officer said to me, 'There isn't a town, village or hamlet in which
children are not being sexually exploited.' We should start from the assumption
that children are being sexually exploited right the way across the
country." — Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children's Commissioner for England
A court in London has sentenced seven members of a Muslim child grooming gang
based in Oxford to at least 95 years in prison for raping, torturing and
trafficking British girls as young as 11.The high-profile trial was the latest in a rapidly growing list of grooming cases that are forcing politically correct Britons to confront the previously taboo subject of endemic sexual abuse of children by predatory Muslim paedophile gangs.
The 18-week trial drew unwelcome attention to the sordid reality that police, social workers, teachers, neighbors, politicians and the media have for decades downplayed the severity of the crimes perpetrated against British children because they were afraid of being accused of "Islamophobia" or racism.
The seven members of
the Oxford child grooming gang who were found guilty (clockwise from top
left): Kamar Jamil, Akhtar Dogar, Anjum Dogar, Assad Hussain, Mohammed
Karrar, Bassam Karrar, and Zeeshan Ahmed.
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Judge Peter Rook, who presided over the trial that ended on June 27 at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (aka the Old Bailey), sentenced five of the men to life in prison and ordered them to serve a minimum of between 12 and 20 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Rook said the severity of the jail terms -- which are longer than those in other high-profile grooming cases such as those in Rochdale, Derby and Telford -- were meant to send a message to abusers that they would be targeted and brought to justice.
After reading the sentence, Rook said the men -- who are from Pakistan and Eritrea (see profiles here) -- had committed "a series of sexual crimes of the utmost depravity" and had targeted "young girls because they were vulnerable, underage and out of control."
The ringleaders of the gang, brothers Akhtar Dogar, 32, and Anjum Dogar, 31, were given life sentences and were told by the judge that they had been found guilty of "exceptionally grave crimes." They are to remain in prison for a minimum of 17 years before becoming eligible for parole.
A second pair of brothers, Bassam Karrar, 33, and Mohammed Karrar, 38, were also given life sentences. Mohammed Karrar was given a minimum sentence of 20 years for the "dreadful offenses" he committed against the girls, including one child whom he branded with the letter "M" for Mohammed. He began pimping the girl when she was only 11, and forced her to have a backstreet abortion when she was 12.
In graphic testimony, one of the victims told the court that Mohammed Karrar would charge men £500 ($750) to have sex with her. They would take her to homes in High Wycombe where she would be subjected to gang rapes, incidents that she described as "torture sex." The men would tie her up and gag her mouth with a ball to stop her cries from being heard. The men would play out abuse fantasies; sometimes she was left bleeding for days afterwards.
In one of her few acts of defiance, she threatened Mohammed Karrar with his own lock knife as he was preparing to rape her; he knocked her out with a metal baseball bat.
Mohammed's younger brother, Bassam Karrar, who was found guilty of brutally raping and attacking a 14-year-old girl while he was high on cocaine, was ordered to serve a minimum of 15 years.
Kamar Jamil, 27, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 12 years. Assad Hussain, 32, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 28, were both jailed for seven years.
The six victims who gave evidence were aged between 11 and 15 when the abuse took place. They were plied with drugs and alcohol, repeatedly raped, sold and trafficked as prostitutes, all at a time during which when they were supposedly in the safekeeping of local authorities.
The trial -- details of which were so disturbing that jury members were excused from ever having to sit on a jury again -- exposed years of failings by Thames Valley police and Oxford social services. The court heard that the girls were abused between 2004 and 2012 and that police were told about the crimes as early as 2006, that they were contacted at least six times by victims, but failed to act.
The mother of Girl "A" said the police and social services had failed to protect the girls and made her and other family members feel as if they were overreacting. She said: "I can recall countless incidents when I have been upset and frustrated by various professional bodies."
The mother of Girl "C" told the British newspaper The Guardian that she had begged social services staff to rescue her daughter from the rape gang. She said that her daughter's abusers had threatened to cut the girl's face off and promised to slit the throats of her family members. She said that they had been forced to leave their home after the men had threatened to decapitate family members.
Despite irrefutable evidence that the girls were being sexually abused, no one -- according to a report published by the House of Commons on June 5 -- acted to draw all the facts together, apparently due to fears by police and social workers that they would be accused of racism against Muslims.
The report, "Child Sexual Exploitation and the Response to Localized Grooming," states: "Evidence presented to us suggests that there is a model of localized grooming of Pakistani-heritage men targeting young White girls. This must be acknowledged by official agencies, who we were concerned to hear in some areas of particular community tension, had reportedly been slow to draw attention to the issue for fear of affecting community cohesion. The condemnation from those communities of this vile crime should demonstrate that there is no excuse for tip-toeing around this issue. It is important that police, social workers and others be able to raise their concerns freely, without fear of being labelled racist."
These allegations have been confirmed by the imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, Taj Hargey, who says race and religion are inextricably linked to the spate of grooming rings in which Muslim men are targeting under-age white girls.
Writing in the Daily Mail on May 15, Hargey states: "Apart from its sheer depravity, what also depresses me about this case is the widespread refusal to face up to its hard realities. The fact is that the vicious activities of the Oxford ring are bound up with religion and race: religion, because all the perpetrators, though they had different nationalities, were Muslim; and race, because they deliberately targeted vulnerable white girls, whom they appeared to regard as 'easy meat', to use one of their revealing, racist phrases."
"But as so often in fearful, politically correct modern Britain," Hargey continues, "there is a craven unwillingness to face up to this reality. Commentators and politicians tip-toe around it, hiding behind weasel words. … Part of the reason this scandal happened at all is precisely because of such politically correct thinking. All the agencies of the state, including the police, the social services and the care system, seemed eager to ignore the sickening exploitation that was happening before their eyes. Terrified of accusations of racism, desperate not to undermine the official creed of cultural diversity, they took no action against obvious abuse."
According to Hargey, "Another sign of the cowardly approach to these horrors is the constant reference to the criminals as 'Asians' rather than as 'Muslims.' In this context, Asian is a completely meaningless term. The men were not from China, or India or Sri Lanka or even Bangladesh. They were all from either Pakistan or Eritrea, which is, in fact, in East Africa rather than Asia."
He also says the grooming rings in Britain are actually being promoted by imams who encourage followers to believe that white women deserve to be "punished." He writes that Muslims in Britain "have been drip-fed for years [with] a far less uplifting doctrine, one that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt. In the misguided orthodoxy that now prevails in many mosques, including several of those in Oxford, men are unfortunately taught that women are second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority."
Hargey points to a telling incident in the trial when it was revealed that Mohammed Karrar branded one of the girls with an "M," as if she were a cow. He writes, "'Now, if you have sex with someone else, he'll know that you belong to me,' said this criminal, highlighting an attitude where women are seen as nothing more than personal property. The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent and sleazy -- sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs or non-believers. Their dress code, from mini-skirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behavior by being exploited and degraded."
According to the British Children's Minister, Tim Loughton, "We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg now. For too long it was something of a taboo issue in this country, little spoken about, little appreciated, little acknowledged or dealt with." He also said the grooming cases raise "very troubling questions about the attitude of the perpetrators, all but one of whom were from Pakistani backgrounds, towards white girls. Nothing is gained by shying away from that."
During a recent House of Commons hearing on "Child Sexual Exploitation and the Response to Localized Grooming" the Deputy Children's Commissioner for England, Sue Berelowitz, said: "What I am uncovering is that sexual exploitation of children is happening all over the country. As one police officer who was the lead in a very big investigation in a very lovely, leafy, rural part of the country said to me: 'There isn't a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited.' The evidence that has come to the fore during the course of my inquiry is that that, unfortunately, appears to be the case."
Berelowitz continued: "We should start from the assumption that children are being sexually exploited right the way across the country. In urban, rural and metropolitan areas, I have hard evidence of children being sexually exploited. That is part of what is going on in some parts of our country. It is very sadistic. It is very violent. It is very ugly."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics: United
Kingdom | Soeren Kern
U.S. in the Middle East: Good Intentions, Terrible Results
by Ali Salim
July 11, 2013 at 4:00 am
July 11, 2013 at 4:00 am
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The
Americans continue to support various Islamic organizations, such as Egypt's
threatened Muslim Brotherhood, in the vain hope that they will cooperate and
create "stable" institutions. The Americans have deluded themselves
into thinking that the the Islamists will forget their anti-Crusader agenda --
the driving force behind everything they do -- and their ultimate goal of
Muslim world domination.
Whether or not America won in Afghanistan is a question that will have to be
answered by history. What can be said with certainty, however, is that the West
did not slink away with its tail between its legs the way the Soviets did. The
Soviets, for those with short memories, were shredded by the Taliban, who, with
American weapons and the cunning of the Afghan cheetah, outmaneuvered the
clumsy Soviet special forces and their fleets of tanks, APCs and attack
helicopters.The unfortunate part of the saga is that the Taliban and its rotten fruit, Al-Qaeda, repaid its American benefactors by ramming two planes into the World Trade Center and are plotting to do worse. However, the Pentagon seems to have come to the realization that radical Islam will not honor a treaty made with a non-Muslim regime or government. As far as Islam is concerned, treaties made with infidels are ephemeral and function only as leverage for Islamic goals, and are fated to be unilaterally violated when the Muslims feel the time has come. Once the ultimate goal of Muslim world domination has been achieved, the treaties will be worthless and non-Muslims will be forced to convert.
The Israelis made a mistake in the 1970s when they allowed Sheikh Yassin to set up the social organization called Mujama al-Islamiya in the Gaza Strip as a counterweight to the PLO. The organization later took the name Hamas, committed endless terrorist activities against Israeli citizens and has never given up its stated goal of destroying the State of Israel. The Israelis made a similar mistake when they helped the Shi'ite Amal party and the various associations in the Lebanese villages in their efforts to get the Palestinians terrorist organizations -- which harassed the Shi'ite villagers and raped their women -- out of Lebanon. As soon as Arafat and his cronies had been driven out, with Israeli help, the Shi'ites founded Hezbollah, which, thanks to Iran, has the military capabilities of a small country and has been using them to attempt to obliterate Israel.
The American road to hell in the Middle East is paved, as usual, with good intentions and terrible results. When the Americans pulled out of Iraq, after toppling Saddam Hussein, the Shi'ites took over the country: the men of President Al-Maliki work for Iran, along with the Assad regime in Syria. Now, when the Americans are getting ready to pull out of Afghanistan, the future of the country remains an open question and the issue of President Karzai vs. the Taliban remains unresolved. The Taliban's demand to establish an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan based on the Sharia, Islamic law from the 7th century, does not bode well for President Karzai.
Despite the lessons of the past, the Americans continue to support various Islamic organizations, such as Egypt's threatened Muslim Brotherhood, in the vain hope that they will cooperate and create "stable" institutions, or at least have a positive relationship with the West. The Americans have deluded themselves into thinking that the Islamists will somehow forget both their anti-Crusader agenda -- the driving force behind everything they do -- and the Islamists' ultimate goal of Muslim world domination.
Free Syrian Army
soldiers (Source: WikiMedia Commons)
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Their problem is what weapons to send; to whom to send them; how to send them so that they do not find their way into the hands of the Islamist gangs operating side by side with the Syrian opposition, and how to keep the arms from being turned, in the future, against the Americans and their allies.
Recently, in Doha, Qatar, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry promised Prime Minister Hamad al-Thani, before he turned his country over to his son, that the Americans would supply the Syrian opposition with arms to stop the slaughter of the Sunni population. Apparently the Americans have understood that the civil war in Syria is only the tip of the iceberg of Iranian-Russian interests, and will have consequences not only for the Middle East but also for the regional and global status of the United States.
America's decision to support the Syrian opposition signals a change in policy that overcomes its previous hesitation. It has now formulated a plan that takes all possibilities into account. Supplying weapons to General Salim Idris, the (secular) commander of the rebel so-called "Free Syrian Army" forces may neutralize the forces of Iran and Hezbollah which operate with Russian support.
If the weapons do in fact influence the balance of power on the ground, this change might send a message to the Iranians and the Russians, telling them that America is not prepared to have Russia erode its status in the Middle East and will not accept more procrastination and threats -- and that America has decided to take action. Both the Russians and the Assad regime openly warned Europe not to supply arms to the rebels. Sending American arms to the opposition is the first step in stopping Russia and cutting off both direct and indirect (through Iraq and Lebanon) Iranian support for the Assad regime. It can only be hoped that the American weapons will force Assad to move toward an interim government. In the final analysis, the Syrian civil war may end with a radical Islamic takeover of Syria, a risk one can only hope -- what with all the other Arab Spring Islamist takeovers -- that the West has no intention of taking.
The Syrian regime responded to the American decision to arm the rebels with anger and threats, and declared it would not be blackmailed. After the Geneva II conference was sabotaged, largely by the Russians, it should have become clear that the time for procrastination and naiveté was over. The rebel announcement of the Al-Qadissiya operation in Aleppo in recent weeks meant a Sunni counterattack was on the table, overtly supported by the Western countries in response to the organized Shi'ite slaughter of Syria's Sunnis. The arms race between the United States and Russia is escalating in Syria. Relations between the two superpowers are heading for an unavoidable -- and unprecedented -- clash. Which country is the world betting will back down?
Abu Qatada and the New Standard of "Rights"
by Douglas Murray
July 11, 2013 at 3:00 am
July 11, 2013 at 3:00 am
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The top
priorities of ECHR concerns are matters such as Abu Qatada's "right to a
family life." This change meant that he could not be sent somewhere where
all these lovely new rights would not be afforded to him.
It was impossible not to smile watching the footage of Abu Qatada in his
specially-chartered private jet finally taking off from the UK for his home
country of Jordan to face trial on terrorism charges.
Abu Qatada moments
before his deportation, July 7, 2013. (Source: UK Home Office)
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He was tried and convicted in Jordan, in absentia, for a series of bombings there, yet continued to roam freely in Britain. This was the era of "Londonistan" when the British security services thought that you could keep an eye on such people and that as long as no terror attacks took place in our own countries, there was nothing wrong with allowing such people here.
In February 2001, Qatada was arrested at his home; police found £170,000 in cash there. Also in the house was £805 pounds in an envelope labelled, "For the Mujahedin in Chechnya." Then came 9/11, and when eighteen recordings of Abu Qatada talks were found in the Hamburg flat of the leader of those attacks, Muhammad Atta, the police acted. It had taken a long time, but Abu Qatada was finally in trouble.
For more than a decade, he then caused the most appalling headaches for successive home secretaries. One thing more than any other was the cause of this: by this time, the Labour government of the day had signed Britain up to the European Convention on Human Rights, a Convention that bound Britain -- by no further means than an over-reaching court and a certain amount of peer-pressure -- to abide by a wholly new standard of "rights."
So for instance where previously national security could be said to be an over-riding right, indeed concern, it now found itself somewhat lower-down the list of things to trouble government. The top priorities of ECHR -- and thus British -- concerns are matters such as Abu Qatada's "right to a family life." These rights were not just rights which Britain must provide to Qatada. They were rights which must be protected as long as he stayed in Britain, and which must be protected if any other nastier, non-ECHR-signing government were to express any interest in him. This change meant that Qatada could not be sent somewhere where all of these lovely new rights would not be afforded to him. Such as, unfortunately, Jordan -- which happened to be the one country that really wanted him.
Although the Jordanian authorities repeatedly requested that Qatada be deported to face justice there, it proved a stalling point. Although Britain continued -- rightly -- to regard the country as one of the better powers in the region, Jordan nevertheless turned out not to be such a friend that we could trust it with one of its own home-grown terrorists.
The European Court -- which batted the Qatada case back and forth with successive UK governments -- insisted first of all that it was most important that Qatada not be sent back to Jordan finally to face up to the terror charges against him because if he did, he might be mistreated in some way. At significant cost of expense and time, the British government agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the Jordanian authorities precisely to ensure that Qatada would not be mistreated. The Jordanian authorities gave their assurance.
But then members of the ECHR moved the goalposts. On the next expensive to-and-fro, they decided that nobody whose evidence might be heard at a future Qatada trial in Jordan could be someone who might have been treated in a manner deemed unacceptable by the ECHR. And so it went on and on.
Most of us had simply expected to grow old with Abu Qatada alongside us. He was, after all, in and out of the maximum security Belmarsh prison. Some of the time this went well. Other times he was found consorting with people he oughtn't to have been consorting with, and back in he went. Just recently he was re-arrested after the discovery of extremist material in his home. Who would have guessed?
For all this time, of course, Qatada was a desperate embarrassment to the state. But once Britain signed up to the ECHR, we became governed not by politicians but by lawyers. And they had great fun frustrating multiple Home Secretaries, exploring every available option to keep him in the UK.
In recent months the current Conservative Home Secretary, Theresa May, again travelled to Jordan to receive further assurances and to sign further memoranda with the Jordanian authorities. And this time, after only a couple of decades, several million dollars and egg all over the British state and its new laws, the Qatada extradition finally occurred and is being hailed as a triumph of justice.
Of course it is extremely good to be rid of him. I hope he has a nice time in Jordan. But nobody can look back on recent years and think this has been anything but a farce. Tough cases make bad laws, they say. But Qatada was not a tough case. He was an easy case. We should have been rid of him years ago. The fact that we weren't -- and are never likely swiftly to rid ourselves of a Qatada-type again -- is the only cloud in the sky into which we waved him off.
Related Topics: United
Kingdom | Douglas Murray
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