Tag Archive for: Pew Trust

For the West to Survive ‘Stop Islamic Immigration’

Hon. Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) in the Hague Parliament is rightfully concerned about the future of the West in this Breitbart Report article, Geert Wilders: Stopping Islamic Immigration Is a Matter of Survival.”

The massive flood of Muslim flight to Europe from the conflicts in the hotspots of the Ummah in Africa, the Middle and South Asia threatens both the demography and Judeo Christian values that are the foundation of laws of Europe and the West.

Last weekend on The Lisa Benson Show we heard evidence of Wilders’ arguments in the stark figures of how this historic Dar al Hijrah immigration wave has literally swamped Sweden resulting in thousands of instances of lawlessness, sexual assault, and murder by hordes of Muslim young men and unaccompanied minors. The Hon. Kent Ekeroth, deputy of the Sweden Democrat party in the Riksdag, the national parliament, revealed that 35,000 unaccompanied youths now constitute 50 percent of students in the country’s high schools. The upwards of 200,000 migrants and asylees that Sweden received in 2015 and early 2016 as US international affairs commentator Barry Nussbaum indicated is equivalent to receiving the equivalent here of the population of the State of Indiana.

The Swedish tolerance for this wave of Muslim immigration has resulted in the Interior Minister issuing an expulsion order for 80,000 of these unwanted arrivals. Neighboring Finland has issued an expulsion order for 20,000 migrants. Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel once welcomed one million Muslim migrants has reached near rebellion with public opinion polls demanding that she resign. Community leaders in Germany, Norway and other locations in the broken borderless Schengen system have advised young women not to dress provocatively effectively adhering to Sharia demands of domestic Imams.

But Europe is not alone in being threatened. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, under the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is admitting 25,000 Syrian refugees with many being put up in Canadian Forces bases around the country. Given Canada’s 35 million in population that complement of Refugees would be the equivalent in the US of over 225,000, according to recent testimony by Canadian counterterrorism expert, David B. Harris. Then there are the 10,000 Syrian refugees to be admitted here in the US over the next two years distributed in more than 190 communities in the US.  The difficulty is, as Dr. Sebastian Gorka, son of Hungarian Refugees from the 1956 Revolt against Russian tyranny, said on a recent Lisa Benson Show program, how can we possibly vett these refugees, if there isn’t a data base to confirm the documents?

Whether Europe can stop the flight of Muslim migrants is the challenge that Wilders argues if his native Holland, Europe and the West are to survive. Right now that prospect is teetering on the brink unless concerted action is taken to stop Muslim flight at its source in the warring lands of extremism in the Ummah. Yet, the West rejects any concerted multilateral strategy to reverse the great wave of Muslim migration. If it doesn’t adopt such a strategy then the future could be a dystopian realm of unimaginable oppression and chaos for our children and grandchildren.

In April last year, the renowned nonpartisan Pew Research Center released a report on the future growth of world religions. The content was shocking. The report states that, if current trends continue, Islam will almost equal Christianity by 2050. While the world’s population is expected to rise by 35 per cent until the middle of this century, Islam will grow with a staggering 73 per cent.

The consequences of future Islamic growth are frightening. Islam is not a religion like Christianity, but rather a totalitarian political ideology. Its goal is primarily political. Islam wants to make the whole world submit. It aims to establish a worldwide Islamic state and bring everyone, including “infidels,” such as Christians, Jews, atheists, and others, under Sharia law. This is the barbaric Islamic law which deprives non-Muslims of all rights, treats women as inferior beings, condemns apostates and critics of Islam to death, and condones terror. More Islam equals more violence, more intolerance, more terrorism.

With the growth of Islam, the world will become a less safe place. And so will America. According to Pew, the United States will see its number of Christians decline from more than three-quarters of the population today to two-thirds in 2050, while Islam will more than double in size and replace Judaism as America’s largest non-Christian faith. The consequences of the Islamic presence in America have already been visible in several murderous attacks, such last December’s San Bernardino shooting, but also the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, and several other acts of terrorism. If Islam doubles in size, the threat of terrorism will only grow.

In the past, the totalitarian ideologies of Nazism and Communism have both been defeated by the common efforts of America and Europe. Without America, Europe would have been lost. But without Europe, America would have been isolated. If Europe had fallen to either Nazism or Communism, there is no doubt that America would have become the next victim. The Transatlantic alliance between Americans and Europeans has been the key to the survival of our common Western civilization. This alliance is in danger today, because the more Islamic Europe becomes, the less reliable it will be as an ally of America.

Though the predicted future rise of Islam in the US is worrying, the situation in Europe is far worse. The Pew figures show that Islam has already gained a significant foothold on the European continent and is growing rapidly. Europe’s Islamic population, boosted by higher birth rates and immigration, will nearly double, from 43 million people in 2010 to 71 million people in 2050. In the Netherlands, Muhammad is currently already the second most popular name among newborn boys nationwide and even the most popular name in our three largest cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. This is also the case in the Belgian capital Brussels, the Norwegian capital Oslo, and the British capital London. As a matter of fact even in the whole of Great-Britain, Muhammad has become the most popular name for newborn boys.

The Islamization of Europe will profoundly influence European politics. Winning the Islamic vote will become the goal of ever more European politicians. As a result, Europe’s policies will become even less friendly towards Israel and the United States than they already are. The Atlantic alliance is in danger.

The Islamic vote has already decided at least one major European election: the 2012 French presidential elections. These were won by the Socialist Francois Hollande over the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy by only 1.1 million votes. Since an estimated 2 million Islamic votes participated, of which 93 per cent – 1.7 million votes – went to Hollande and only 7 per cent to Sarkozy, it was the Islamic vote which gained Francois Hollande the Elysée Palace.

According to Pew, the growth of Islam in Europe is caused by several factors, including the young age of the Islamic population. However, more than half the growth can be attributed to immigration. In other words, stopping all immigration from Islamic countries would reduce the growth of Islam in Europe, but also in America, by more than half. The easiest way to limit the growth of Islam in the West is to stop Islamic immigration.

Islam is an existential threat to our Western freedoms and our Judeo-Christian civilization. It also threatens the Atlantic partnership between America and Western Europe. It is our duty to limit this threat. It is our mission as patriots to protect our nations. The first measure we must take to stop Islam, reduce the risk of terrorism and save our civilization, is to stop all immigration from Islamic countries. It is a matter of survival.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iraqi Journalist Dispels Myth that ISIS Has No Ties to Islam

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

U.S. Liberal Jews pushing for more Syrian refugees. Why?

At one time I was a member of the national board of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in the early 1980’s when the priority was helping Jews escape from tyranny in Russia, Ethiopia and Syria. There are reported to be less than a dozen elderly Jews left in Syria. HIAS was also involved in processing Vietnamese boat people refugees in the US.  That was over three decades ago.  HIAS is one of the 11 Voluntary Agencies (VOLAGS) under the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) and Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement pushing to bring to the US 100,000 Syrian refugees streaming out of the more than 5 million displaced internally and in external camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

HIAS has joined with Arab American advocacy groups and immigration lawyers, some controlled by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, like those on the Syrian American Council, to bring predominately Muslim Syrian refugees to America. As we have seen in the flood of an estimated  400,000 Syrian refugees, a vanguard of whom have entered the broken open borders of the Shengen system of EU countries, the predominate demographics are young men,. Among who may be ISIS sympathizers that may add to the already daunting problems that FBI Director Comey had said already faces us in all 50 states.

President Obama announced last week an increase in the annual allotment of 10,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled here. The current total PRM allotment under the Refugee Act of 1980 is 70,000. The PRM updated a list of local resettlement agencies in more than 180 communities throughout the US being screened as potential recipients of these Syrian and other UN designated refugees. One of those on the PRM listed is Catholic Charities in my community of Pensacola in northwest Florida.

A Pew Trust study revealed that 1.7 Muslim immigrants were admitted to the US over the US over the period from 1992 to 2010. Upwards of 250,000 Muslim refugees have already been admitted under the US Refugee Resettlement Program from conflict zones in the Middle East, Eastern and sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia since 1990. One refugee family assisted by the program in Boston were the Chechen Tsarneavs, whose sons, Tamerlane and Dzhokhar, who became Jihadist terrorists who perpetrated the heinous Boston Marathon bombing. We have written extensively about assimilation and national security problems of Somali refugees in the U.S., especially the problems in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Columbus, Ohio and other émigré communities. Some of these communities have spawned émigré fundamentalist fighters who joined terrorist groups Al Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Some of these émigré jihadis have returned to the U.S. and been arrested and convicted for material support for terrorism. Now the threat may be self motivated jihadists who perpetrated attacks such as in Garland, Texas and the deadly attack on Marine and Naval reservists in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On 9/11 the Jewish Telegraph Association (JTA) reported these developments in an article, “Arab Americans look to Jews for help on Syrian refugees:”

Over the last few days, HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, launched a petition drive calling on President Barack Obama to swiftly open America’s gates to an additional 100,000 Syrians, and the president of the Union for Reform Judaism wrote to the president and congressional leaders calling for a coordinated international response.

“Our great nation must respond immediately by providing safety, food, shelter, refuge, and dignity,” wrote the Reform leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs. “How can a nation built by refugees from political persecution turn our back on refugees fleeing religious and political persecution?”

Omar Hossino, the Washington-based Syrian American Council’s public relations director, singled out HIAS as being particularly helpful.

“HIAS has been consistently calling for more resettlement and pushing back against the discriminatory rhetoric opposing opening the doors to Syrian refugees,” he said.

This week, HIAS president Mark Hetfield held a conference call with American Jewish organizational officials to talk about his agency’s decision to join with Arab-American leaders in critiquing U.S. policies that limit the numbers of refugees settled in the United States to about 70,000 per year.

Only about 1,500 Syrian refugees have been admitted since the start of the civil war in 2011. Obama announced Thursday that the United States soon would take in 10,000 refugees, but Hetfield said that number was inadequate.

“We are dealing with a global humanitarian crisis to which the entire world must respond,” he said in a statement issued within hours of Obama’s announcement. “If Germany can open its doors to 800,000 asylum seekers, the U.S., with a population four times the size of Germany’s and a history as a nation of immigrants and refugees, can take 100,000.”

Hetfield appealed to regional Jewish groups to act on the grassroots level to help absorb refugees.

Akram Abusharar, a Gaza-born U.S. immigration attorney who handles approximately 80 Syrian asylum cases per month, said HIAS’s involvement was a boost to his cause.

“The Jewish community has more capacity to move the politicians on this issue than the Arab-American community,” he told JTA in an interview.

But more recently Hossino has tracked an uptick in opposition to bringing Muslim immigrants to the United States — especially among Republican candidates and members of congress. In television appearances last weekend, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said the United States has “done its fair share” when it comes to the refugee crisis. Sen. Rand Paul asserted that the U.S. “can’t accept the whole world” and should adopt a cautious stance towards resettlement.

Hetfield, in the conference call, said concerns about the Muslim and Arab identity of the refugees are misplaced, reminding listeners of similar reasoning when some nations in the 1930s blocked Jewish immigration from Germany.

So why is HIAS joining with other willing NGOs like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran World Refugee and Immigration Services, Church World Services and the International Rescue Committee promoting a flood of Syrian Refugees to come to the U.S.?  Is it a humanitarian gesture of openness?  Or is it the fees they receive  from processing refugees and asylees who fit the UN and US Citizenship and Immigration Service definitionthat determines who  qualifies to be admitted  for asylum under the Refugee Act of 1980? Those refugees that are admitted under the US resettlement programs receive a smorgasbord of federal and state welfare, medical, housing and other benefits that some migration specialists’ estimate could exceed 10 to 12 billion dollars annually. That taxpayer burden might double if HIAS and other VOLAGs, with the assistance of the Obama White House, succeed in dramatically increasing the allotments for Syrian Refugees over the next several years.

Syrian Christian refugees(1)

Syrian Christian Refugees.

If anyone among the displaced Syrian refugees deserves priority it is the Syriac Christians and other non-Muslim religious minorities with existing Diaspora communities in the US. Communities that might provide private sponsorship assistance. Those traditional private sponsorship programs like the Canadian federal effort have demonstrated the ability to rapidly absorb refugees who share basic values traditional with our society.  We also have the examples of Jewish philanthropists like the venerable UK publisher, 95 year old Lord George Weidenfeld, a holocaust survivor, spearheading the Safe Havens Fund actively supporting efforts to spare a fraction of these threatened Christian and non-Muslim Middle East minorities. HIAS could expand upon Weidenfeld’s example.

HIAS, Jewish Federations and the leaders of the  Reform Movement should carefully vet Arab American ‘partners’ before sallying forth on humanitarian grounds to admit more Syrian and predominately Muslim refugees. Especially, when there are threatened Middle East Christians and other non-Muslim minorities that deserve preference. That is demonstrated by the Safe Havens Fund of Lord Weidenfeld, who received the Theodore Herzl Award of the World Jewish Congress.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Death Toll Rises in Chattanooga Islamic Terror Attack

Saturday brought more somber news of a fifth victim of the Islamic terror massacre perpetrated by 24 year old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. He was killed by Chattanooga police in the rampage at a Naval/Marine Recruiting Center on Thursday, July 17, 2015.  The Wall Street Journal reported:

Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith was a reservist serving on active duty in Chattanooga. Officials said he died early Saturday morning. Mr. Smith, 26 years old, joined the Navy because he was inspired by the service of his late grandfather, said his step-grandmother, Darlene Proxmire. Mr. Smith was a married father of three girls and grew up in Paulding, Ohio, she said.

The other victims were four Marines:

Along with Mr. Smith, four Marines were killed in the attacks. U.S. official and family members on Friday confirmed the identities of the deceased Marines: Thomas Sullivan, of Springfield, Mass.; Skip Wells, from Marietta, Ga.; David Wyatt, of Hixson, Tenn.; and Carson Holmquist, of Grantsburg, Wis.

More emerges on the shooter-Abdulazeez and his family

The shooter, Abdulazeez, was a Kuwait-born naturalized U.S. citizen. He was a 2012 graduate the University of Tennessee –Chattanooga with a degree in electrical engineering who lived with his parents in nearby Hixson, Tennessee. He had just started a position with a local cable and wire firm.  The parents may have been among several hundred thousand Palestinians expelled from Kuwait following the First Gulf War in 1991, many of whom fled to Jordan. These Palestinians, unlike those who fled Israel during the 1948-1949 War, were not covered by the UNWAR refugee program. Rather they were eligible for refugee and asylum status under the UNHCR program.  The New York Times reported:

Born in Kuwait in 1990, Mr. Abdulazeez became an American citizen in 2003 through the naturalization of his mother, federal officials said; his father was also naturalized. Because he was a minor, he did not have to apply separately for citizenship. A divorce complaint filed by his mother in 2009 and then withdrawn, said the parents were from “the State of Palestine.”

Counterterrorism officials had not been investigating Mr. Abdulazeez before Thursday’s shootings. His father had been investigated about seven years ago for giving money to an organization that apparently had ties to Hamas. … The investigation did not result in charges. But the father was placed on a watch list for a while. A similar investigation was conducted in the 1990s and it, too, did not lead to charges.

Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said the watch list had for a time prevented the elder Mr. Abdulazeez from flying. “I believe there was a preliminary investigation, but there was no derogatory information, and he was taken off the list,” he said.

The shooter appears to have been heavily armed in the rampage, equipped with an assault weapon and two other long guns. It is reported that he purchased on-line some of the weapons for the rampage including an AK-47, AR 15, Saiga 12. He had also purchased two 7mm and 22 caliber side arms. He had a history of interest in guns, trained in using them at a local range and firing BBs at targets in the backyard of family’s home in Hixson. He also had a history of alcohol and drug related problems.  Following his graduation from UT-Chattanooga he received an offer of employment at a nuclear plant operated by Cleveland-based First Energy. Abdulazeez had been an intern at a TVA nuclear facility during his undergraduate career. A mandatory First Energy employment drug test in 2013 resulted in the loss of his job.  Notwithstanding, Islamic prohibitions against alcohol and drugs, Abdulazeez sought counseling for the problem in 2012 and 2013. Nevertheless the problem persisted as attested by his being arrest   in April 2015 on a DUI charge by Chattanooga police. A New York Times article noted the circumstances:

The only run-in Mr. Abdulazeez had with the law in the Chattanooga area appears to have been an April 20 arrest on a charge of driving while intoxicated; he posted a $2,000 bond.

According to a police affidavit, officers spotted him weaving through downtown Chattanooga after 2 a.m., in a gray 2001 Toyota Camry, and when they pulled him over, they smelled alcohol and marijuana, and he failed a sobriety test. They said his eyes were bloodshot, his speech was slurred, he was “unsteady on his feet,” and he had “irritated nostrils” and white powder under his nose, which Mr. Abdulazeez said came from snorting, crushed caffeine pills. He was scheduled to appear in court on July 30.

Those trips to Jordan

Abdulazeez, who held a US passport, made several trips to Jordan beginning in 2003 to visit a maternal uncle and family. He also made a side trip to Kuwait during a 2008 trip to Jordan. His father accompanied him on a trip in 2010 to Jordan after his no fly status had been lifted.  He made a 2013 trip to Jordan that returned home via Canada.   In April 2014, he purchased a one way ticket to Jordan, finally returning home via Doha, Qatar. What he did and where he went on that trip has yet to be determined, by law enforcement, FBI and foreign intelligence sources.  At issue is whether he made contact with the Al Nusra front or Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, the Islamic Action Front, or possibly ISIS via social media and whether he made a possible trip to either Iraq or Syria.  A WSJ report commented on the final trip to Jordan by Abdulazeez:

Mr. Abdulazeez wasn’t a familiar figure among jihadists in Jordan, according to Mohammad Shaabi, known as Abu Sayyaf, who sympathizes with the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. He said it is still possible Mr. Abdulazeez could have contacted extremists through means such as social media.

A few ISIS sympathizers on Twitter referred to Mr. Abdulazeez after the shooting as “a soldier of the Islamic State” and “an individual lion.”

Evidence of Family Problems – Bankruptcy and a Divorce Filing

The Abdulazeez family went through a spate of difficulties.  The father Youssuf filed for bankruptcy in 2002 which was completed by 2005. More troubling was a divorce filing by his wife Rasmieh I. Abdulazeez in 2009.  The Times reported:

Mrs. Abdulazeez said that her husband, Youssef S. Abdulazeez, had “repeatedly beaten” her and had “on occasion” abused the children by “striking and berating them without provocation or justification.”

The complaint also accused Mr. Abdulazeez of sexual and verbal abuse, and of declaring his intentions “to take a second wife, as permitted under certain circumstances under [Sharia] Islamic law.”

Evidence of Anti-Israel, US Animus and Salafism in final text message

Abdulazeez had evidenced concerns about IDF actions during the 2014 summer rocket war by Hamas.  According to a Reuters report, friends noted that following the 2014 trip he became increasingly concerned about Middle East conflicts. It was after the final trip that he went on-line and purchased weapons and went to practice using them at a gun range.  Friends said:

Abdulazeez’s friends, who asked not to be identified for fear of a backlash, said he was upset about the 2014 Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza and the civil war in Syria.

“He felt Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia were not doing enough to help, and that they were heavily influenced by the United States,” said the friend who received the text message.

Another friend said, “He had always talked about it, but I’d say his level of understanding and awareness really rose after he came back.”

A text message containing a Hadith sent the night before the attack may have indicated his adoption of fundamentalist Islam:

“Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of mine, and then I have declared war against him”.

An Islamic expert explained:

For jihadists and ultraconservative Salafist Sunni Muslims, the Hadith “is usually understood within the context of al-wala wa-l-bara (or) love for Islam and hatred for its enemies,” said David Cook, an associate professor who specializes in Islam in the department of religion at Rice University in Texas.

Pew Trust Islamic Extremism chart

Conclusion

The nationwide outpouring of mourning and grief at the wanton killing of five US service personnel in this Islamic inspired jihad at the Chattanooga Naval/Marine Recruiting Center was palpable.   The immediate national reaction to the tragic attack by troubled Abdullazeez was reflected in an offer by Governor Rick Scott in Florida to provide security by moving military recruitment centers in Florida to local National Guard armories.  There were also calls for lifting state laws barring US military uniformed personnel from carrying side arms.

There was still the conundrum of how federal and state law enforcement and homeland security agencies can prevent another Islamic inspired homeland jihad and acknowledge the threat.  Ultimately, it will require a new more responsive and clear eyed Administration. An Administration that appreciates what a recent Pew Trust poll has found: a surge to 53% of Americans concerned over domestic Islamic extremism.  Concern over ISIS is even higher at 73% of those polled by the Pew Trust.

The Chattanooga Recruitment Center massacre has another poignant side effect. It took six years for the Pentagon to award Purple Hearts to the service victims of both the  June 2009 Little Rock Army Recruitment Center attack and the November 2009 Fort Hood Massacre perpetrated by domestic Jihadis. We hope that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and incoming Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, Jr. will waste no time in making suitable posthumous awards to the grieving families and loved ones recognizing these valiant service personnel who died in combat against domestic Islamic terrorism in our midst.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is courtesy of the Miami-Herald.