The Trial of Marine Le Pen in France

Marine Le Pen is the president of the National Front, the largest political party in France. She was ranked the 71st most influential person in the 2011 Time 100, and again in the top 100 in 2015. She is now in court, charged with inciting religious hatred. Read the following, which was edited and excerpted from an article in the New York Times, and see what you think about her "religious hatred:"

OCT. 20, 2015 — With pugnacity and self-assurance, the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen defended herself in a courtroom on Tuesday against charges of inciting religious hatred against Muslims, provoking cheers of “France for the French” from supporters in the courthouse halls afterward.

Drawing on French anxiety over the migrant surge in the east, an electoral campaign in which Ms. Le Pen’s National Front is seen as having momentum, and her own charisma, she turned what was meant as an accusatory stage into a full-throated platform for her views.

The context was unusual, but the hard line taken by the populist leader was not: France’s Muslim immigrants are an alien force threatening French values.

Far from being a provocation, at Tuesday’s hearing she described a notorious speech she made five years ago comparing Muslim street prayers to the Nazi occupation as an “exhortation to respect the law” on behalf of “those who have been abandoned, the forgotten ones.”

“There are people with police-style armbands at these prayers,” Ms. Le Pen continued. “I’m scandalized. This is an abandonment by the state.”

She was in court under France’s tough hate-speech laws for the speech she made to supporters in this city five years ago, which touched on two of the most tender nerves in the French collective psyche: the Nazi occupation and the country’s relationship with its Muslims.

Nobody had yet so publicly compared the Muslim presence to the Nazis, and the speech provoked an uproar, a slow-moving investigation by judicial authorities, and prodding by rights groups.

Locked in 2010 in a fierce battle for control of her party, she delighted activists by launching into the subject of mass Muslim prayers in the street...

“If you want to talk about the occupation, let’s talk about that, by the way, because here we are talking about the occupation of our space,” she said in 2010. “It’s an occupation of entire stretches of territory, of neighborhoods where religious law is applied. This is an occupation. Sure, there are no armored vehicles, no soldiers, but it’s still an occupation, and it weighs on the inhabitants.”

Anti-racism and Muslim rights groups filed a complaint and demanded an investigation. But it took the lifting of her parliamentary immunity by the European Parliament in 2013 for the case to move forward, spurred on by the human rights groups.

The case finally came to trial on Tuesday. A final judgment is expected on Dec. 15, and Ms. Le Pen could face a fine of over $50,000 and up to a year in prison.

Read the whole New York Times article here: Marine Le Pen, French National Front Leader, Speaks at Her Hate-Speech Trial.

Media and politicians don't really know how to deal with criticism of Islam. They don't know if it's wrong or not. What will ultimately change public opinion (and therefore the kind of politicians we have in office) is a greater number of voters who understand the problem of Islam. How is this going to happen? It's up to those of us who already understand it to share what we know with others as skillfully as we can. If you get objections you have difficulty answering, find an effective response here: Answers to Objections.

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Multiculturalism is Good

Someone left the following comment on the article, What Part of Our Culture is Worth Preserving? and I thought it was worth sharing to a broader audience. The commenter wrote:

Instead of rejecting multiculturalism, we need to tell the multiculturalists: "You're right! Multiculturalism is good! That's why Islam is a problem. It intends to establish a monoculture over the longer run!"

If we hate on multiculturalism, we make enemies of people who could be our allies against Islam. If we attack multiculturalism, we make people who could be allies reject us because they think, understandably, that WE want a monoculture instead. No. What we want is freedom and pluralism and, yes, multiculturalism. And that is precisely why Islam must be stopped, because IT will establish a monoculture.

As we've said here before, it's not multiculturalism that causes problems, but blind multiculturalism — multiculturalism without distinction.

For more coaching on talking to people about Islam, go here: Tools.

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The Meaning of Jihad

The following is excerpted from an article by Bassam Tawil, a scholar based in the Middle East. It was originally published at the Gatestone Institute here: The Real Threat to Europe.

The late Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, predicted that Islam would conquer Europe without even firing a shot. To understand and explain the fate awaiting Europe, it is necessary to listen seriously to what the upper echelons of Islam say to each about their own intentions — in Arabic. These messages are quite different from those on Western television. What they say to one another is that the mission of Islam is to lead the whole world and eradicate all other religions, as they have been made irrelevant by the Qur'an.

Their doctrine appears openly and without reservation in books and on websites. It is spread in local languages in mosques by the imams in their communities throughout Europe. These communities operate according to an ancient Islamic code: They command immigration; then the forming of enclaves in the host country, then the eventual violent takeover of the host.

Once this process is complete, all the Islamic communities will unite to form the Islamic Caliphate. It will have no borders and no other identity. Then there will be Peace. This, they say, was the state of affairs under Muhammad and this will be the state of affairs in the future.

It is markedly apparent to us, however, that the world refuses to listen to what the Islamists are saying. Anyone who dares to issue a warning is called, among other names, an alarmist or a racist.

On the rare occasion when an expert does warn of the coming danger, the global media turn him into an object of scorn and derision. There seems to be less than no wish even to look at Islamist ideology. Al Jazeera, run by the Emir of Qatar to promote radical Islam, has instructed its American division not to use the words "terrorist," "militant," "extremist," "jihad" and "Islamist." Does anyone seriously think they are doing that to promote transparency?

Throughout history, society has disregarded — and often even persecuted — any messenger who says things it does not like, such as Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake in 1600 for wounding the world's narcissism by proposing that stars were other suns that could have other planets. Recently, global terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who made the 1994 documentary "Terrorists Amongst Us: Jihad in America," about the dangers the U.S. would face from radical Islam, has been vilified and ridiculed for an exaggerated comment about Birmingham. His apology may have reflected an error about the facts, but his central message was right. It did not negate his warning about the future danger these Muslim enclaves will present to Europe. Paris is not the only city with areas off-limits to police. Every tourist who goes to Marseilles, Köln, Berlin and Frankfurt is warned by local inhabitants about places to be bypassed.

The same is true of Stephen Coughlin, who was a Major in a Military Intelligence unit of the U.S. Army. Asked, as a lawyer, to prepare a report on Islamic sharia law, he delivered, in July 2007, the most meticulous, painstaking, thoroughly-documented report: "To Our Great Detriment": Ignoring What Extremists Say about Jihad." He was promptly fired. He had apparently come up with the "wrong" answer. The U.S. Army, it seems, had expected to hear that sharia law was not much different from the Magna Carta.

Commentators in Europe all had opinions about the terrorist attacks at the Charlie Hebdo office and the kosher supermarket in Paris. They reverentially discussed the motivation of the terrorists, the anti-Muslim atmosphere in Europe and concern over additional global jihad attacks, but showed distressingly little understanding of the meaning of jihad.

Read the rest of the article here: The Real Threat to Europe.

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Death Does Not Solve the Problem in the Long Run

On our web site and our Facebook page, we've often seen this comment, or something like it: "There really is only one answer for jihad and that is death to the jihadis."

The only problem with that answer is that the ideology from which a jihadi is made would still exist, even if every last one of them were killed. So it's like trying to destroy a particular plastic toy rather than destroying the factory that makes them.

And really, you can't destroy this factory. There will always be Korans in this world. What you can do, however, is expose the game while non-Muslims are still a majority. The non-Muslims of the world could realistically expose, contain, and marginalize Islam. But to do that, they would have to understand what Islamic doctrine says. As long as they stay in the dark about that, they are vulnerable to being "scammed." They'll go along with things like public calls to prayer, Muslims having their own no-go zones, or whatever special consideration is being demanded.

But once the general public is aware of the true and disturbing nature of core Islamic teachings, they will be willing to do what needs to be done: To stop all concessions to Islam, period. Islam will wilt on the vine. It will have no air to breath, no sunshine to grow.

Don't get me wrong: Orthodox Muslims committing violence need to be stopped — jailed or killed. But that will not solve the problem of Islam. Only the education of non-Muslims can do that.

Non-Muslims who don't know what Islam really is are vulnerable to being bamboozled. Those who know can see right through taqiyya and will not be moved by it. Consider the latest scam that cons money out of U.S. taxpayers. Almost 300,000 people in the last two years have been called by someone claiming to be an IRS agent. The taxpayer is told they owe taxes and must pay right now or face dire consequences. Believe it or not, some people pay right on the spot. So far these scam calls have conned taxpayers out of 14 million dollars.

A person who doesn't know about this scam is vulnerable. But if you know the IRS always contacts people by mail if they owe money, it would be impossible to fool you with such a call.

People who see what ISIS and Boko Haram are doing get upset. It's completely understandable. And a feeling of anger makes people want to lash out. Also understandable. The education of our fellow non-Muslims may seem too mild a remedy for such horror in the world, but in the long run it can push back Islam better than anything else.

And it's not such a mild remedy. If you think talking to your fellow non-Muslims about Islam is easy, you haven't tried it yet.

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What's New With Geert Wilders

The Winston Churchill of our time — Geert Wilders — was recently interviewed by Jamie Glazov. Watch the interview below. Among the highlights are these:

1. Wilders is out to create an international organization, a freedom alliance, to stop the Islamization of the free world.

2. Although most politicians are still out of the loop, the general population is beginning to understand the problem of Islam.

3. It's not just politicians on the left who perpetuate ignorance about Islam. Many leaders from both sides of the aisle are clueless about Islam's prime directive, and their lack of understanding is endangering us all.

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