A quote from Bernard Lewis in Imprimis [the free newsletter of Hillsdale College], September 2006

When Muslims living in Chicago or Los Angeles or Birmingham or Hamburg want to give their children some grounding in their faith and culture – a very natural, very normal thing – they turn to the traditional resources for such purposes: evening classes, weekend schools, holiday camps and the like. The problem is that these are now overwhelmingly funded and therefore controlled by the Wahhabis, and the version of Islam that they teach is the Wahhabi version, which has thus become a major force in Muslim immigrant communities.

Let me illustrate the significance of this with one example: Germany [...] [W]hereas in Turkish schools in Turkey, students get a modern, moderate version of Islam, in German schools, in general, they get the full Wahhabi blast. The last time I looked, twelve Turks have been arrested as members of Al-Qaeda – all twelve of them born and educated in Germany.

Nonsense first, as usual.

Spain will no longer burn effigies of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslim armies occupied Spain from 711 to 1492. For the past five centuries the Spanish have traditionally celebrated the 1492 liberation from the Moors (as the Muslims were locally called) with local village festivals during which the battles against the Moors were reenacted and effigies of the Muslim prophet – the so-called “la Mahoma” – were mocked, thrown from the windows, and burned.
 
Last year the town of Bocairent near Valencia decided to discontinue the tradition of centuries. The town did not want to risk becoming the target of Islamic suicide bombers. On Monday the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that this year the other Valencian towns are also abolishing ancient traditions which are perceived to be offensive to Muslims. The people of Beneixama used to stuff the head of the Mahoma with firecrackers which went off as the onlookers applauded. This year Beneixama decided to abolish this part of the celebration. Antonio Valdés, the local mayor, told El Pais: “This was not an essential part of the festivities. It could hurt the sensitivities of some. We decided to avoid that.” The reconquista will still be commemmorated, but without “aggression” towards Muhammad.
 

A quote from Chris Gillibrand at UK Free blogspot, 2 October 2006

Mr Cameron [the leader of the British Conservatives] has tonight said that he won’t send any of his children to public schools [as the English call their private schools]. Is this principle? or is it more like the typical socialist position of denying to your children what you had for yourself. Think Tony Benn and any number of Old Etonian socialists.

“The Jihad, the Islamic so-called Holy War, has been a fact of life in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East for more than 1300 years, but this is the first history of the Muslim wars in Europe ever to be published. Hundreds of books, however, have appeared on its Christian counterpart, the Crusades, to which the Jihad is often compared, although they lasted less than two hundred years and unlike the Jihad, which is universal, were largely but not completely confined to the Holy Land. Moreover, the Crusades have been over for more than 700 years, while a Jihad is still going on in the world. The Jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history. It has, in fact, been largely ignored. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the Crusades eighty times more space than the Jihad.”

A quote from Bassam Tibi at Spiegel Online International, 2 October 2006

Even the comparatively moderate [German] Turkish organization DITIB says there are no Islamists, only Islam and Muslims – anything else is racism. That means that you can no longer criticize the religion. Accusing somebody of racism is a very effective weapon in Germany. Islamists know this: As soon as you accuse someone of demonizing Islam, then the European side backs down. I have also been accused of such nonsense, even though my family can trace its roots right back to Muhammad and I myself know the Koran by heart.

[...] In Germany representatives of the Islamic communities try to hijack children who are born here, along with the entire Islamic community, to prevent them from being influenced by the society which has taken them in. Children born here are like blank sheets on which you can write European or Islamic texts. Muslim representatives want to raise their children as if they don’t even live in Europe.

If you wanted to become really rich, yet at the same time help your fellow man, what would you do? There is no contradiction. The answer is -- start a business -- where you provide employment to others and also provide a new or improved good or service, or an existing good or service at a lower price.

Respect for individuals and human rights are frequently – and rightfully – quoted as crucial factors separating Western civilization from Islam. Ohmyrus, one of the pundits at Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina’s website www.faithfreedom.org, explains important differences between the Western and the Islamic views of human rights:

David Cameron, the leader of the British Conservatives, told the Tory Party Conference that he will not be offering a policy of tax cuts. Speaking about past Tory mistakes, he declared: “While people wanted, more than anything, stability and low mortgage rates, the first thing we talked about was tax cuts. [...] [S]ocial responsibility – that is the essence of liberal Conservatism. That is the idea I want us to explain.” No tax cuts, has become Mr Cameron’s mantra.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said today that though he believes in tax cuts, he cannot go into the next election promising them. Many Church of England bishops say they believe in God, but don’t really.

Utter hypocrisy to try and catch hold of Reagan’s coat tails yesterday when US Senator John McCain spoke at the Tory Conference and called for tax cuts, and then talk like this today.

Seldom do small countries capture the limelight. For weeks now Hungary has been a news item thanks to a speech of its Premier. That small country has just produced one of the deepest political lows on record that matches the “I-have-never-had-sexual-relations-with-that-woman”. Except for the crude language one is reminded of a certain someone’s “Tischgespräche”. All this is reason enough to report it, not for Hungary’s sake, but because some generalizations might correspond to the unspoken truth in your community.

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark was the villain behind a hate campaign against Islam and Muslims which culminated in the Danish Cartoon affair. At least that is what some Danish imams maintain. On 30 September 2005 the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. According to the imams it was the Queen who instigated this when in April 2005 she urged the Danish people to resist Islam.