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‘These filthy teachers will pay’: French police arrest man suspected of threatening school staff while on morning walks
4 Nov, 2020 16:02
A man described as “known to police” has been arrested in the French town of Athis-Mons near Paris, for allegedly making threats to local teachers, vowing to “avenge the Prophet.”
The suspect was detained on Wednesday morning in front of the Jean-Jaurès school in Athis-Mons, French media reported, citing police sources. The day before, police were deployed to the school to provide “security” for the facility following a complaint from a member of the teaching staff.
The man reportedly shouted threats at the teachers of the elementary school at least twice before his arrest while passing by the school during his morning walks, French media reported. He vowed to “avenge the prophet of Allah” and make “the filthy teachers pay.”
The identity of the 39-year-old suspect has not been revealed. The man has no criminal record, a prosecutor’s office in the southern Paris suburb of Evry told Franceinfo. However, a police source has confirmed to Le Parisien that he was known to law enforcement, though not to the “intelligence services.”
It is unclear if any particular developments at the Jean-Jaurès school prompted the suspect to issue his threats. However, his actions sparked concern in the wake of the murder of Samuel Paty, a French teacher who was beheaded after showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to his class.
Just over a week after the Paris tragedy, four people were killed in an attack inside a church in Nice. Following the teacher’s murder, Paris vowed to fight Islamist extremism in the country as the nation appears to be witnessing a surge of Islamic radicalism.
As many as 66 probes have been launched into cases of suspected justification of terrorism since Paty’s murder in mid-October, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday, adding that some of the investigations involve suspects as young as 16 or even 12 years old.
A week ago, a high school student, 16, was indicted for justifying terrorism in the eastern city of Vesoul after he said that all “disbelievers” should share “the same fate as Mr. Paty.” On Tuesday, another high school student was taken into custody in Bourges, central France, after supposedly sharing photos of beheading on social media. An investigation was also opened against two 12-year-old students in Strasbourg after they made remarks suggesting they support Paty’s beheading during a minute of silence for the slain teacher.
Speaking to the Law Committee of the French National Assembly, Darmanin described what he called “a habit of hyper violence” among French youth as “extremely worrying.”
It has always been, and yet it is only now that you are doing something about it. it may well be too little and too late!
In the Middle of Election Chaos, Pompeo Decides to Turn Loose the Terrorist Arm of Uighurs in China - Why?
China condemns US for ‘whitewashing’ terrorist organizations after dropping Islamic extremist group’s designation
6 Nov, 2020 17:13
© Reuters / Paul Carsten
Beijing has called on the US to reverse its decision to remove the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from its list of terrorist organizations, accusing Washington of ‘whitewashing’ militant groups.
Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that “China deplores and firmly opposes the US decision” to drop the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from its list of designated terrorist groups.
Demanding the US reverse its decision, he strongly affirmed that “terrorism is terrorism” and urged America to “refrain from ‘whitewashing’ terrorist organizations or going backwards in international cooperation on counter-terrorism.”
The change in policy was made in a US State Department notice by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, although the Trump administration did not immediately explain why they had delisted the group. The absence of an explanation led Wenbin to accuse the US of having “flip-flopped” on the designation and claiming it has exposed “the current US administration’s double standard on counter-terrorism.”
Removing ETIM from the list means that the group will no longer be subject to any US sanctions that were imposed, removing any limits on financial transactions or travel restrictions that had previously applied.
Beijing has been accused of detaining up to one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps in Xinjiang, which China terms “vocational training centers.”
The ETIM is an Islamic extremist group founded by Uyghurs in Western China who seek to create an independent Islamic state in Xinjiang, called East Turkestan. The group has been affiliated with Al-Qaeda and it has been listed as terrorist by the UN Security Council ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee since 2002.
Is it possible the US Admin holds China responsible for Covid19? I am inclined to think so, and to think that this is an aggressive act of retaliation against China, to create more trouble for the Xi regime.
I'm sure the last thing Pompeo wants is another Islamic country the size of Mongolia. But it seems he is quite confident that China will never allow that to happen.
Lest you think for one minute that Pompeo is friendly toward Muslims...
Lebanon’s former FM Gebran Bassil hit by US sanctions over alleged corruption & Hezbollah support
6 Nov, 2020 18:31
after a meeting in Beirut in 2019. © Reuters / Jim Young/Poo
The US has imposed sanctions on prominent Hezbollah-allied Lebanese politician Gebran Bassil “for his role in corruption.” The former foreign minister branded the move an “injustice.”
Bassil is accused by the US of “appointing friends to positions” in 2017 and funneling government cash through shell companies to “individuals close to him” in 2014 when he was minister of energy.
Of course, it might have been more effective to sanction him in 2017 rather than wait until he was out of government.
“The systemic corruption in Lebanon's political system exemplified by Bassil has helped to erode the foundation of an effective government that serves the Lebanese people,” US Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said when announcing the sanctions.
The sanctions restrict any assets fully or partly controlled by Bassil in the US, and they are the latest measures the US has slapped on Lebanese officials for alleged corruption and over their support for Iran-backed Hezbollah, which it classifies as a terrorist organization.
Bassil, son-in-law of President Michel Aoun and head of the Shia-allied Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), said the sanctions did not “frighten” him and that he had not been “tempted by promises.”
“I became accustomed to injustice,” he added in a tweet responding to the sanctions.
Bassil's support for Hezbollah was also “every bit of the motivation” for the decision to sanction him, one senior US official told Reuters.
The politician has previously defended the militant group, which formed a political alliance with his FPM in 2006, citing Hezbollah's MPs in parliament as evidence that it is not a terrorist group.
Hezbollah has slammed the US over the sanctions, calling them “a blatant interference in Lebanon’s affairs.” By targeting Bassil, Washington was trying to force a large Lebanese political bloc to submit to its conditions and dictations, the group said in a statement.
The sanctions come as Lebanon's Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri, an opponent of Hezbollah, is still trying to form a government after his predecessor resigned amid public outrage over the devastating explosion in Beirut Port in early August.
The country has been struggling with an economic crisis and collapsing currency for several months – a situation further complicated by both the blast and the Covid-19 pandemic.
And the influence of Hezbollah and Iran.
How nervous would you be?
French Muslims STAND GUARD outside Catholic church in show of solidarity with Christians following terrorist attacks
6 Nov, 2020 16:23
General view Lodève Cathedral © Wikipedia
Muslims of Lodeve, a town in the south of France, organized to protect the local cathedral in a show of solidarity with Catholics, following the deadly terrorist attack in Nice at the end of October.
“In recent years, I’ve had a pit in my stomach,” French-born Muslim Elyazid Benferhat told the Associated Press. The activist said that after every act of Islamic terrorism inside France, it is regular Muslims who are left to suffer the consequences in terms of social persecution, even though they “had nothing to do with it.”
After the latest terrorist attacks, Benferhat assembled a team, recruiting acquaintances and fellow members of the local football club, to protect the local church. He also said that they coordinated with police, after the French government decided to increase safety measures at religious sites.
Lodeve church-goers were touched by Benferhat’s group standing guard outside the Cathedral, and the parish priest, Luis Iniguez, said the gesture gave him hope in dark times, PA reported.
While his mother was from Algeria, Benferhat was born in France and grew up speaking only French, saying he is “more French than anything. But I am also Muslim,” he added, “And we have seen Islamophobia in this country, and terrorism.”
Benferhat spoke of the beheading of a teacher near Paris last month, calling it an act of “unbelievable, unprecedented cruelty.” After the October 29 attack at the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice which saw three more people killed, he decided to act “so that everyone wakes up.”
When a local paper published a picture of Benferhat and other Muslims protecting the church, Iniguez hung it inside the cathedral. “People were happy to see that,” he said.
After being spotlighted in the national media, Benferhat attracted some far-right critics. Despite that, he says that the response has been “90% positive” and the group is planning to guard the church again on Christmas and maybe even expand their scope past Lodeve.
It is good to see a Muslim speak out and act out against terrorism. There are, however, too few of them. There are also too many reasons for sane Muslims to be radicalized in France. Islamophobia is real and, in my humble opinion, should be. Muslims can be radicalized at the drop of a hat, and terror triggered by things that might seem very small to the French.
This is what I mean...
Poll shows 57% of young Muslims in France believe Sharia law
more important than national law
6 Nov, 2020 14:56
FILE PHOTO: Members of the Muslim community pray during Friday prayers inside the mosque in Frejus, France.
© FRANCE-ELECTION / LEPEN REUTERS / Jean-Paul Pelissier
A new opinion poll has shown France’s Muslim population to be increasingly disconnected from the general population, with 57 percent of young Muslims believing French law to be subordinate to Sharia law.
A study published on Thursday by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), highlighted the increasing divide between the French general population and Muslims living in France.
The study’s most astonishing finding is that the majority of Muslims under the age of 25 (57 percent) believe Islamic law to be more important than French law in France – an increase of 10 percent since 2016. About 38 percent of French Muslims overall felt the same. Meanwhile, only 15 percent of the Catholic population believe that their religious laws should come before French law.
A number of questions on the poll were indirectly related to the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty on October 16, who had shown a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed in a class on freedom of expression, inciting rage in one student.
Of the 515 French Muslims who took part in the survey, 66 percent opposed the right of teachers to show caricatures of religious figures to their students. French people overall (75 percent), including Catholics (80 percent), overwhelmingly supported the right of teachers to show the images.
Meanwhile, only 34 percent of Muslims in France approved of the recent dissolution of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and BarakaCity. Both groups were disbanded by President Emmanuel Macron in his recent crackdown on radical Islam for inciting hatred and justifying violence – a claim which they have denied. Sixty-five percent of the general population agreed with banning the CCIF while 76 percent agreed with banning BarakaCity.
The study also provided broader data showing the differing cultural opinions between the French population, particularly Catholics, and Muslims living in France.
Further examples show Muslims being overwhelmingly in favor (81 percent) of specific hours for women to use municipal swimming pools and the teaching of Arabic in public schools. French people have generally been fiercely opposed to both notions.
Islam has been under the spotlight in France following a series of terrorist attacks in Paris, Nice, and Lyon in late October. Macron’s response has seen a number of Islamist groups banned, including the ultranationalist Turkish organization ‘Grey Wolves’.
The president also introduced new measures in October to tackle what he termed “Islamist separatism,” including providing local officials with more powers to deal with radical Islam.
The French government’s crackdown has been slammed by many Muslim leaders across the world and has led to a boycott of French goods. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared the treatment of Muslims in France to that of the Jews before World War II.
Austria closes mosque & religious association for ‘radicalization’
of presumed Vienna attacker
6 Nov, 2020 12:35
Armed police officers patrol near the site of a gun attack in Vienna, Austria on November 4, 2020.
© Reuters / Leonhard Foeger
Austrian authorities have decided to close two religious facilities that contributed to the extremist views of the hardline Islamist accused of the Vienna attacks. The shootings left four people dead and more than 20 injured.
Austria’s interior and integration ministers announced the closure of radical mosques, APA news agency reported on Friday. The step was taken following a crisis meeting between the ministers and the head of the Islamic Religious Community of Austria (IGGO), Umit Vural.
Speaking at a press conference later in the day, Integration Minister Susanne Raab said that at least two religious venues contributed to the radicalization of the man who staged the deadly shooting. One of them, a mosque, has been already closed, another one, which is legally an association, was ordered to shut down as well.
Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, for his part, acknowledged that “unacceptable” mistakes have been made while handling the evidence available on the attacker. Earlier this week it emerged that Slovakia informed Austria about the Vienna attacker's attempt to purchase ammunition this summer, yet the valuable information got lost somehow.
The head of security for Austria got fired today!
Vienna police chief Gerhard Puerstl, in turn, said that more sustainable measures should have been taken against the attacker and if the Slovak intelligence had been duly processed the outcome of the whole chain of events would have been different. The official also revealed that four suspects, detained in Germany earlier on Friday, had spent time with the assailant.
The deadly attacks occurred across Austria’s capital late on Monday. Four people were gunned down after a shooting started near a synagogue in central Vienna, with 23 more injured across the city.
The primary suspect, who was killed by police, turned out to be a 20-year-old Austrian citizen identified as Kujtim Fejzulai, who also held a North Macedonian passport. He had previously been jailed for trying to join Islamic State in Syria, but had been released early in December.
Some 15 suspects detained in connection with the shootings are said to be members of a hardline Islamist network. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
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