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The sooner EU countries deal with the problem of Islamization, the easier it will be to fix.
Too many countries have left it too late and are in for a nightmare of a problem.
Denmark seems to be ahead of most countries in realizing the problem.
Denmark tightens immigration rules, barring convicted criminals
& unemployed from citizenship
22 Apr, 2021 00:53
FILE PHOTO: The border crossing between Sweden and Denmark at Oresund bridge is seen from the Swedish side of the border in Malmo. © Reuters / TT News Agency / Johan Nilsson
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and a coalition of liberal and conservative parties have agreed to impose tighter controls on citizenship, vowing to deny naturalization to criminal convicts and the recently unemployed.
The Ministry of Immigration and Integration Affairs announced on Tuesday that the government had struck a deal with the Venstre Party, the Conservative People’s Party and the Liberal Alliance to tighten the country’s immigration rules, putting emphasis on “Danish values.”
“Obtaining Danish citizenship is a great declaration of faith from Danish society, according to the parties to the deal,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that “They are therefore in agreement that it is necessary to raise the bar for who can become a Danish citizen.”
In addition to rule changes regarding criminal convictions, which also include foreign-born residents who have been fined for at least 3,000 Danish krones ($485) for various offenses, the government will now require immigrants to have held a job for at least three-and-a-half of the prior four years before becoming citizens. Those who have been fined for the specified amount, as well as anyone found to have violated the Aliens Act or committed “social fraud,” will be made to wait a period of six years before they become eligible to apply.
Immigration and Integration Minister Mattias Tesfaye, a member of the ruling Social Democratic Party, said the reforms will ensure that “those who receive Danish citizenship, with all the rights that go with it, are well integrated into Danish society and have also embraced it – including Danish values,” adding that such values include a commitment to free expression and social equality.
We have to draw a line in the sand. People who have been imprisoned must not have Danish citizenship.
Morten Dahlin, a lawmaker from the center-right Venstre, cheered the move in a tweet on Tuesday, saying the parties had reached “strong agreement” on the new rules, which will involve “cracking down harder on criminal foreigners” and “putting a greater focus on Danish values.” He added elsewhere that “Those we welcome in the Danish family must have embraced Denmark and stayed on the right side of the law.”
The Conservative Party’s Marcus Knuth echoed that praise, insisting that “criminal aliens with a prison sentence can never apply for Danish citizenship,” though he lamented that the government would not agree to impose a “ceiling on the number of citizenships for applicants outside the EU and the Nordic countries.”
However, the Immigration Ministry did note that going forward, any “sharp increase” in immigration from “outside Europe” will trigger a meeting between the parties to the new agreement, which will “assess whether there is a need to change the current rules.”
With some of the strictest immigration controls in Europe, Denmark has embarked on a number of reforms in recent months aiming to improve integration for new arrivals. Last month, Interior Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek announced a new government initiative to place caps on “non-western” residents in certain neighborhoods labeled as “ghettos,” aiming to keep them below 30% in an effort to prevent the rise of “parallel societies” within Denmark. When the project was announced, some 15 neighborhoods fell into the “ghetto” category, with 25 others considered at risk.
Of Denmark’s population of 5.7 million, around 11% have a migrant background, with 6% of “non-western” origin. In line with the new rule change, Frederiksen’s Social Democratic government has taken a tougher line on migration, with the PM calling in January to reduce the flow of asylum-seekers into the country to “zero.”
'Cyber-caliphate' linking Islamist network expanding globally with online recruitment, says religious freedom report
Peter Kenny | Ecumenical News
Tuesday, April 20 2021
(REUTERS / Stringer) Residents watch as two men walk amidst rubble after Boko Haram militants raided the town of Benisheik, west of Borno State capital Maiduguri September 19, 2013. Islamist Boko Haram militants killed 159 people in two roadside attacks in northeast Nigeria this week, officials said, far more than was originally reported and a sign that a four-month-old army offensive has yet to stabilise the region. Picture taken September 19, 2013.
Persecution of faith groups has drastically increased in more than 95 percent of the world's worst-offending countries – a new shows highlighting how new tech is being used to crush religious freedom.
The Religious Freedom in the World Report 2021 (RFR) is produced by international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) and was released on April 20.
"Along with communist totalitarianism and Islamism, religious nationalism is among the greatest threats to religious freedom and peaceful religious co-existence in our world today," says the report.
Religious minorities in numerous countries – such as India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bhutan, and Nepal, among others – increasingly face severe marginalization and active persecution by many of their own fellow citizens, with the rise of religious majoritarian populist movements.
The report found that, over the past two years, oppression against vulnerable faith communities has increased in all but one of the 26 countries listed in the survey's worst ('red') category.
The report covers all 196 countries worldwide and traced the rise of transnational Islamist networks, including an online "cyber-caliphate," which is "expanding globally [and] is now a tool of online recruitment and radicalization."
This core finding of the report, describes how "Islamist terrorists employ sophisticated digital technologies to recruit, radicalize and attack."
"The question facing Africa is not whether the continent is the next battleground against Islamist militants, but rather when will sufficient lives be lost and families displaced to move the international community to action? Already the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands, and millions, respectively," says the report.
'RIPE FOR ISLAMIST IDEOLOGIES'
It notes that sub-Saharan Africa is ripe for the infiltration of Islamist ideologies.
That is due to generations of poverty, corruption, pre-existing intercommunal violence between herders and farmers over land rights (exacerbated by the consequences of climate change) and weak state structures, so the area has become a breeding ground for marginalized and frustrated young men.
"Battle-hardened Islamist extremists have moved south from the plains of Iraq and Syria to link up with local criminal groups in the Sub-Saharan countries of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Mozambique," the report says.
ACN International President Dr. Thomas Heine-Geldern stated on the gravity of the RFR's findings, "Regrettably, despite the – albeit important – UN initiatives and the staffing of religious freedom ambassadorships, to date the international community's response to violence based on religion and religious persecution in general can be categorized as too little, too late.".
Cross-border networks are "spreading across the Equator" leading to jihadist attacks from Mali to the Philippines, taking in Comoros in the Indian Ocean, with the aim of creating what the report calls "transcontinental caliphates."
The report also describes how digital technology, cyber networks, surveillance including artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition technology has increased persecution.
In China, the Communist Party is keeping religious groups in line with the help of 626 million AI-enhanced surveillance cameras and smartphone scanners.
In addition to Islamist extremism, the report identifies two principal protagonists of persecution, highlighting increased crackdowns by authoritarian regimes, such as North Korea, and majoritarian religious nationalists' persecution of minorities in India and Burma (Myanmar).
COVID-19 BLAMED
COVID-19 was also to blame for increased persecution, according to the RFR, which found that societal prejudice against minorities, including in Turkey and Pakistan, meant that some faith groups were denied food and other vital aid.
"The COVID-19 pandemic opened an important debate around the world about fundamental rights, including the right to religious freedom, the implications of legislative overreach, and whether, in some cases, aggressively secular governments are adequately able to discern the importance of these rights," said the report.
The report concluded that violations of religious freedom occur in almost one third of the world's countries (62 out of 196), many of them the most populous nations such as China, India and Pakistan.
The RFR also reported on increasing cases of sexual violence used as a weapon against religious minorities – crimes against women and girls who are abducted, raped and forced to convert.
In the West, the report concludes, there has been a rise in "polite persecution," a phrase coined by Pope Francis to describe how new cultural norms and values have consigned religions to what the RFR calls "the quiet obscurity of the individual conscience", making it more difficult for people of faith to access the public square.
Regarding positive developments, the RFR highlights progress in inter-religious dialogue, noting the Vatican's role, in particular the declaration signed by the Pope and Sunni leader Grand Imam Ahamad Al-Tayyib of Al-Azar.
The Pope's agreement with the grand Imam is not unanimously considered a positive development.
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