Europe: Muslim Reformers Need Police Protection

by Giulio Meotti • September 22, 2017 at 5:00 am

Seyran Ates, a moderate imam, has received "300 emails per day encouraging me to carry on," but "3,000 a day full of hate," some with death threats.
In Germany, it is not the Muslim supremacists, such as those who preach killing homosexuals, who have to live under police protection; it is the Muslims who criticize the supremacists. The only "crime" these concerned Muslims committed was to exercise their democratic right to speak -- not in Iran or Syria or Iraq -- but in Europe.
These reformers try to keep alive the values of the Enlightenment -- freedom of speech, separation of religion and state, equal justice under law -- to break through the coerced silence of Islam, in which "blasphemy" is punishable by death. The price, however, has been exile, torture, ostracism, public marginalization, and too often life itself. Where are the "moderate Muslims"? In the Muslim world, they are in prison, in exile, in flight. In Europe, these genuine "moderate Muslims" have to live under police protection. Multiculturalism for them is a prison.

Berlin's Seyran Ates, an imam who preaches a genuinely "moderate Islam", needs around-the-clock police guards to protect her from fundamentalist Islamists. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Abdelbaki Essati, the imam the authorities believe was at the center of terrorist attacks in and around Barcelona, was apparently a master of deception -- "too polite, too correct". He was apparently able to deceive European intelligence services by preaching a "moderate" version of Islam, while at the same time, orchestrating deadly jihadist attacks.

Another imam in Europe, Seyran Ates, preaches a genuinely "moderate Islam" but needs around-the-clock police protection.

Ates, training to become an imam, seems to have thought there was no better place than Berlin to inaugurate her mosque, Ibn Rushd-Goethe. It is the first Islamic religious site open to unmarried women, homosexuals, atheists, Sufis, unveiled women -- all those people that many fundamentalist Islamists have said they wish to silence or kill.

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Is Germany Heading to a "September Surprise"?

by Vijeta Uniyal • September 22, 2017 at 4:00 am

Instead of hurting the AfD's electoral prospects, the smear campaign has ended up driving more voters toward the party.
Questioning the AfD's legitimacy on judicial and constitutional grounds has a two-pronged effect. It not only sows doubt in the minds of the undecided voters, but also scares away state employees, law enforcement officers, business owners and even law-abiding citizens from associating themselves with the AfD out of fear of government scrutiny and reprisals.
"I am ashamed that I am not brave enough to support the AfD publicly. But it would be professional suicide and I will never see my grandchildren again," confessed another anonymous German voter.

An AfD campaign poster. Attempts by the German government and the media to smear the far-right party appear to be backfiring. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Stay at home instead of vote for the right-wing party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is the last-minute advice Chancellor Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, is giving to voters ahead of Sunday's election in Germany.

"Better not vote than to vote for the AfD," Merkel's powerful right-hand man told the German newspaper Bild on Tuesday. "The AfD are dividing our country. They are exploiting people's fears. Therefore, I believe that a vote for the AfD cannot be justified.

"These are just a few rabble-rousers who profit from all the reporting on them," he continued, urging the media to stop covering the AfD.

After 12 years of running the country, Chancellor Merkel and her lieutenant still do not understand real democracy. In a real democracy, the voters hold the elected representatives accountable, not the other way around.

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