Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Taru Singh in Lahore (Source: Discover Sikhism)
On Tuesday, the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) of Pakistan shut down Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Taru Singh in Lahore for worship, declaring that it is a mosque. Pakistan’s ETPB, together with certain fundamental extremists, locked down the Gurdwara, infuriating the Sikh community in the neighbouring Islamic country.
Evacuee Trust Property Board is a statutory body under the Government of Pakistan that administers property left behind by Hindus and Sikhs who migrated to India during the partition. It was formed in 1960 following the Nehru-Liaqat Pact in 1950 and Pant Mirza Agreement in 1955.
According to the reports, the controversy over the existence of Gurdwara situated in Lahore has been long-running now. Notably, a large number of devotees from the Sikh community attend the Gurdwara daily to recite the Guru Granth Sahib. The Gurdwara, which is located in the Shaheed Ganj Naloukha region, has a lengthy and tumultuous history and is believed to be a source of friction between the city’s Sikhs and Muslims.
The Gurdwara was constructed in the place where Sikh fighter Bhai Taru Singh was executed in 1745 by the Mughals. The Gurdwara was built on the grounds where the Shaheed Ganj Mosque existed earlier. This has led to the dispute that continues even today. While the Gurdwara was built in 1747, the mosque also remained in place for a long time, while the dispute between Muslims and Sikhs were heard by courts under British rule. But the mosque was demolished by a group of Sikhs in 1935, which led to communal riots.
The gurdwara is located just outside the walls of Lahore, in a locality known as Nalaukha, which is said to have previously hosted Prince Dara Shikoh’s renowned palace. According to the report, Shikoh served as governor of Lahore before being assassinated by his younger brother, Aurangzeb.
The Sikhs hold that under the instructions of Mir Mannu, the governor of Lahore and a representative of the Mughal Empire, hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children from the community were massacred at this location.
The Sikhs allege that Mir Mannu personally authorized them to build a gurdwara here after they promised to assist him in the conquering of Multan at the request of Diwan Kaura Mal, who was afterward granted command of Multan by Mir Mannu, according to the story. Muslims, on the other hand, claim that once the Mughal Empire fell, the Sikhs forcibly took over the mosque, which was still operational. It is notable that After the fall of the Mughal empire, the Sikh empire was established in Punjab.
This is not the first time Pakistan has closed down a Gurdwara and declared it an Islamic place of worship. A similar event occurred two years ago when a major Gurdwara was designated as a mosque, forcing Indian officials to intercede and file a protest in the matter. India had previously maintained that the Gurdwara is a site of devotion, and the Sikh community regards it as ‘sacred.’
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) seems to have a short memory. Although it has only been a few years since the brutal Islamic State (ISIS) was defeated, from the tone of the BBC’s recent articles — featuring a female jihadi’s returning to Europe from Syria — you could be forgiven for thinking that the ISIS bloodbath was just another government-run women’s empowerment initiative.
Depending on the context or agenda of the day, the BBC seems unsure whether “radical” Islam, or “normal” Islam — presuming the distinction can be made — offers a path to the emancipation of women, or to their enslavement. The hijab, for example, may well act as a shield against the prying eyes of men, or a kind of “wife-branding” by husbands who treat their women as chattel, but to the BBC, it is also a “fashionable” symbol of “freedom” and “self-expression”.
This muddled perception probably has more to do with how the BBC would like the world to be when it comes to Islam, rather than how things actually are. Take the sympathetic account of Shamima Begum, the Pakistani-British schoolgirl who felt compelled to make the hazardous journey from the British Midlands to the “ISIS capital”, Raqqa, to marry a jihadist and join in the fun. By her own admission, within weeks she was used to, and evidently unfazed by, the sight of headless corpses and public executions.
Perhaps if ISIS had not been defeated, Begum would have given a plum role by now, perhaps even in the ISIS “morality police”. Instead of continuing her climb to the Islamist group’s topmost echelons, however, she was arrested and incarcerated in a Syrian detention camp. After several attempts by lawyers to reverse the British government’s decision to revoke her British passport, she is now claiming to have been “trafficked”. She would like us to forget about her apparent enthusiasm for immersing herself in the most brutal forms of Sharia law, and instead is demanding sympathy and to be treated as a victim herself.
Numerous sympathetic articles have appeared on the BBC’s website, suggesting that they seem prepared to re-appraise the public’s perception of her as a “black widow”, stitching together suicide vests, and hunting down and punishing “bad Muslims”. Conversely, she is pictured hijab-less, wearing “Western clothes”, looking as fresh faced as the girl next door. Who could possibly object to her return?
It certainly didn’t take long for the BBC to set aside any revulsion for Begum’s actions, and instead focus on the “human rights” of this otherwise fully paid-up box-ticker: Muslim, check. Female, check. “Of colour”, check. Feminist? Perhaps not.
Although forgiveness is not high on the BBC’s to-do list when it comes to trashing figures whose politics they oppose, female jihadis are apparently another matter altogether. Yes, she might have aided and abetted the bloodbath in Raqqa, but now that her “mental health” is at risk after the collapse of “the caliphate'” and her confinement in a Kurdish detention camp, we are urged to re-appraise her “plight”.
Essentially, people at the BBC and other outlets would like the British public to join them in rebranding Begum as a victim, as opposed to her actual role as an oppressor.
“Being a child usually means we are granted innocence,” wrote Hanna Naima McCloskey, defending Begum.
“But that innocence is denied when children belong to marginalised groups — in this case Begum’s ‘Muslim-ness’ – under the system of oppression, Islamophobia – has her as a threat and a danger above all else”.
Being “granted innocence” as a child, McCloskey fails to point out, is intrinsically linked to certain criteria, such as coercion by one’s parents to commit murder; but at what age is that excuse no longer credible? To suggest that it is the “system of oppression” and the “Islamophobia” of Begum’s “Muslim-ness” that turned her into a figure of hate, is not only to excuse her behaviour, but tacitly emboldens a twisted ideology, in which this author was raised, whose ultimate goal is to rid the world of “unbelievers”.
While it is probably easier to indoctrinate a child than an adult, it probably made not the slightest bit of difference to any one of the five killed and 40 maimed by an “innocent” child in Afghanistan in 2019.
Or the nine people slaughtered in a Nigerian restaurant, when three children between the ages of 10 and 15 (Shamima Begum’s age when she arrived in Raqqa) detonated their explosive vests.
Or the 10-year-old girl — also in Nigeria — who killed 16 men, women and children on market day, on behalf of her Islamist “handlers”, Boko Haram.
Or the 16-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber, who, in 2004, blew himself up in a Tel Aviv market in Israel, in the wake of ten other children under the age of 18, whose attacks preceded his.
The list goes on. As far as indoctrination is concerned, there are no age limits. Indoctrinated children will most likely grow up into indoctrinated adults. The problem, therefore, is not the “manipulation of innocent children”, but the ideology itself. The ideology drives a suicide bomber not to differentiate between maturity and immaturity. Any mind can be poisoned, no matter its age. The more discontented the person, the more likely a candidate; and at some point, probably, most people may not feel satisfied with everything. Thanks to the West’s misadventures in the Middle East, resulting in a never-ending flow of migrants to Europe, the number of discontented people may constantly be on the rise.
Of course, people can tone down — or at least claim to have toned down — their views, as is Begum’s current position, and many Muslims in the West find it easier to present themselves as “moderate” — even if they are not.
Circumstances will often dictate how to “present” one’s religiosity. A malleable child at the hands of a fundamentalist parent, for example, will likely find it easier to accept the extremities of “Allah’s will”, or concepts such as martyrdom, than those who have not been offered those thoughts. The same goes for a disenfranchised Muslim, who, in the West, might feel persecuted or pushed into a corner, rather than praised for his “commitment”. Many of them, however, will have already been radicalised, and — like “sleeper cells” — are perhaps even unconsciously biding their time. They are not under direct orders from any human authority. Allah holds dominion over them. Should they fail to flourish within the alien “kuffar” society with which they have become entangled, or should they misread or excuse their lack of success as “oppression”, this is when their indoctrination — seeded as a child — has a chance of re-emerging.
This changeability is part of the reason that Islam is so problematic: its chameleon-like tendency to adapt when necessary, and appear “moderate” if circumstances dictate. There is even a term for it, “taqiyya,” meaning to dissemble, including the degree of one’s religious identity when “in fear of persecution”.
Of course, the perception of “persecution” is almost impossible to measure: it is often totally subjective. People with a tendency to feel offended can see it even if it may not actually be there. Feelings of being persecuted, sometimes referred to as paranoia, can be as just adaptable or acrobatic as the mind of any man, woman or child. In Islam, it often seems that the only requirement for perceiving persecution is if one can successfully make the argument to oneself. Indeed, Islamic scholars often depict taqiyya as being equal to, or even superior to, other virtues such as courage, fortitude or even martyrdom.
Which brings us back to returning jihadis and their supporters, whose “progressive” outlook matches that of many politicians who seem to dwell in ivory towers and BBC executives who have seemingly decided to back Begum’s bid to return to the UK. All these people have one thing in common: they appear to have little idea of what Islam actually is, or worse — how hardy and insidious an ideology it really is.
Campaigning to bring jihadis back to Britain is a really bad, terrible idea. The situation is dour enough as it is, with the risk that the refugees from the war-torn Middle East — they and their terrorist cohorts displaced — may one day “revert” to the fundamentalist Islam in which many of them were raised, as was demonstrated by 22-year-old Libyan, Salman Abedi, a who massacred scores of pop fans at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017.
“We will not tolerate hate towards any part of our community”, declared the authorities, demonstrating just how out of touch they are by issuing the warning — not to terrorists — but to the understandably outraged people of Britain.
It was an apparently irony-free statement, whose implication appears to be that they care more about political correctness than the people they are supposed to serve.
One can sense the frustration of those faced with what must be this dismaying contradiction to the preferred narrative. If only a case could be made for Muslim female empowerment! You can almost hear the cogs turning: how to reconcile Islam with feminism — despite the inconvenient polarities? How to align a “democracy-loving” public broadcaster with the values of a dictatorial 7th century belief system? Easy — contrive it by interviewing an outspoken, self-appointed female Muslim spokeswoman who shares the same fondness as the BBC for self-contradicting psychobabble.
“What struck me was the extent to which religious tradition can be used to excuse violence or challenge it”, said a UK-based Iraqi migrant, Huda Jawad, upon hearing about female jihadis travelling to war-torn Syria.
“I was enraged to hear that Islam was used in the most perverse ways to maintain women’s vulnerability and persecution and enable the perpetrators, who are usually men, to coerce and control them.”
Begum’s decisions, in other words, were ostensibly not her own. She was groomed, not by extremists she had met online, but by the patriarchy of coercive men — probably including her father — who over time presented her with a version of Islam that seeks to persecute and control “vulnerable women”. She and her friends’ misadventure, we are to believe, had less to do with their determined actions or quest for excitement, than it did with men’s dominion over women. I wonder if Begum pondered this revelation as she sewed explosives and nails into suicide vests that would kill and maim both sexes indiscriminately.
“I share their [female jihadis’] hunger for wanting to learn and their confusion about Islam”, Jawad continued.
“Like the young women who are targeted to make the journey to Isis-controlled territory, I sincerely believe in my faith, in the innate way it seems to call for justice and equality and for collective territory… for seeking the fairest & most just solution to problems – for the value it places on human life, whether human or animal. On reason, on learning and on equality.”
The lack of awareness in delivering such a bizarre statement — equating Islam with “equality” and “justice” — is not surprising to me, having heard it all before, countless times from my religious siblings. The assumption that Begum and her friends were “targeted” however, is as laughable as the suggestion that my Muslim siblings were “targeted”. Indeed, my sisters would be hugely insulted at it being inferred that they were targeted, and not “chosen” by Allah Himself. To misunderstand this point, is to misunderstand what Islam is. The prism through which the West sees the world simply cannot be applied to Islam.
Similarly, the BBC’s concept of “feminism” also sits awry next to the “Islamic feminism”, in that in Islam there is no higher authority than Allah — very much a “male” entity, steeped in medieval traditions. All Muslims understand that their Creator’s sensibilities and desires come before theirs, and if those sensibilities rub Western feminism the wrong way, then that is where their paths diverge.
“Islamic feminism can provide [potential female jihadis] with the intellectual and religious tools they seek”, said Jawad, whose “passion” for it did not prevent her from moving to the West.
“I share their rejection of the media’s portrayal of Islam and Muslims as inherently violent. I share their frustration at experiencing prejudice and disrespect for being a Muslim. And for being a woman and a Muslim woman, whether by mainstream society or their own religious communities. “
Believing that the violence associated with Islam in the 20th and 21st centuries is unfairly depicted is to stick one’s head in the sand. Claiming that female jihadis, from Leila Khaled in the 1960s to Begum in 2015, are being “disrespected” for being “Muslim” – rather than being disrespected for planning to massacre non-Muslims, “wrong” Muslims, or anyone-that-gets-in-their-way Muslims, is to be in denial.
Another British schoolgirl turned wannabe-terrorist, after being arrested in 2020, had all of her charges dropped. A Home Office “expert” concluded that she had been “groomed” online by an “extremist” in the US. She was 14-years-old at the time of the offence, only a year younger than Begum. The distinction between the two is that while Begum was presumably indoctrinated by her parents’ devotion to Islam, the unnamed girl was “groomed”. What is the difference between “grooming” and “indoctrination”? One offers you “victim” status, the other does not. If it sounds oblique, it is probably meant to.
In 2020, a 14-year-old boy who had recently converted to Islam was charged with plotting a terror attack. Within a month of converting, he was alleged to have “developed an extremist jihadist mindset”. After learning online how to make explosives out of bleach, tin foil and screws, he also filmed himself in his own “martyrdom” video.
Despite a glut of recent cases, the police, working with counter- terrorism officers, are keen to make the point that there is nothing to worry about. The Hampshire Constabulary issued a statement reassuring the public that they believe the investigation to be an isolated one – “with no known wider risk to the community”. Local MP Paul Holmes tweeted:
“I was briefed on this issue this afternoon and thank the police for their informative release. As they’ve said they believe this to be an isolated incident and speculation on social media is not helpful. Thank you to our police force.”
The “speculation on social media”, we can safely assume, counters this bright and breezy upbeat take on what could have been yet another terrorist outrage.
Meanwhile, the case against “the youngest girl” charged with terrorism offences in the UK has been dropped: the Home Office decided she was a victim of trafficking. The British schoolgirl, now 16, was accused of possessing instructions for homemade firearms and explosives. But “experts” decided she had been groomed online by a US-based extremist. The Derbyshire teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was arrested in October 2020 and was alleged to hold extreme right-wing beliefs.
This is the first time a terrorism prosecution has been halted after a decision of this kind.
Then there is the US case of Alison Fluke-Ekren, a convert to Islam, charged with organising and “leading an all-female battalion”. She is also accused of teaching children to use assault weapons; and in the FBI affidavit, a witness is quoted as saying that one of Fluke-Ekren’s sons was seen holding a machine gun. He was 5 or 6 years old at the time.
Fluke-Ekren allegedly trained women and children to use AK-47 assault rifles and suicide vests in Syria. She is also suspected of recruiting operatives for a potential future attack on a US college campus.
She also allegedly told a witness of her desire to carry out an attack on a shopping mall using explosives, and reportedly said that it would be a waste of resources if it did not kill a lot of people. She is charged with providing and conspiring to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization and faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
Details of the complaint were given in an FBI affidavit from 2019, which was released on January 29, 2022, after she was returned to the US to face charges. It alleges that in 2016, an all-female ISIS battalion, known as Khatiba Nusaybah, was set up in Raqqa, Syria. At the time, the city was the de facto capital of the Islamic State group. The battalion was said to be comprised solely of women who were married to male ISIS fighters.
The UK government now says it is targeting “terrorists, war criminals and spies” as part of a “shake up” of immigration law. If a new bill being debated in the House of Lords is passed, they will be able to remove someone’s citizenship without telling them. This may be so, but that will not prevent the inevitable legal challenges that Begum’s lawyers, and her acquiescent advocates, deem appropriate — challenges that not only undermine the powers of a sovereign state, its legal processes and the will of its citizens, but fail completely to comprehend the actual problem with Islam, which unfortunately is that it is not compatible with Western sensibilities. If the media were to consider this thought and spent less time demonising matters that are not serious threats, they might have understood that by now.
An Algerian migrant was arrested in France on Tuesday after informing police he had just beaten his elderly French landlord to death, according to local reports.
The suspect contacted police in the early hours of Tuesday morning to admit he had attacked the 65-year-old man whose house he had been welcomed into in Vigneux-sur-Seine in the southern suburbs of Paris.
Emergency services were dispatched to the scene, but it was too late for the victim who sadly died of his injuries. The suspect was arrested by French authorities.
He told police shortly after 4 a.m. on Tuesday that he had just had a dispute with his landlord and that the latter had fallen to the ground. The police quickly discovered the victim lying unconscious on the ground in the house with serious injuries to his skull.
“The suspect was covered with blood and seemed very drunk,” a source close to the case told local news outlet Actu 17.
The suspect is a 35-year-old male Algerian national who was reportedly in an illegal situation in France.
According to investigators, the suspect and the victim shared the same home, but a motive for the attack has not yet been established. An investigation is underway for voluntary manslaughter.
How can one ensure the safety of patients on artificial respirators when there are power cuts? This question is undoubtedly of great concern to French people who have relatives in this situation. And for good reason, possible blackouts could occur during the winter, due to the production of the nuclear complex considered at an historical low.
Elected members of the RN, including Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, have taken up the issue of load shedding in the case of patients on respirators. The leftist party La France Insoumise has also chimed in.
Due to the historically low production of nuclear power, possible power cuts may occur this winter in France. And according to the Enedis spokesperson, patients at high risk of death will not be “prioritised”. Enedis is a French public utility company, which manages the electricity distribution network.
“The people who are at high vital risk are not part of the priority customers defined by the prefectures”. In an interview with BFMTV on Monday evening, Laurent Méric, a spokesman for Enedis, gave an update on the people and territories designated as “priority” in the event of load shedding this winter.
According to him, the patients on an artificial respirator are a “non-priority”.
“We are all on an equal footing” in the face of electricity cuts, Méric said disingenuously. Asked about a possible disparity between rural France and France’s big cities, he considered it “normal” to define priority areas, which should be spared from these cuts. “If there are obviously more hospitals in the big cities, these are the areas that will be given priority. It is understandable, it is legitimate,” he concluded.
French premier Elisabeth Borne’s government has already presented a series of measures to deal with possible power cuts this winter. The power cuts will be programmed and targeted – a maximum of two consecutive hours with load shedding confirmed the day before in the event of an overload of the electricity network.
RN expresses outrage
Méric’s comments did not go unnoticed. In the media, many elected representatives of the Rassemblement National (RN) have strongly denounced his speech. “It’s mind-boggling,” responded Marine Le Pen, quoted by the same media. For his part, Jordan Bardella blasted a government that “seems to have lost sight of any basic respect for the French and particularly the most fragile among us”.
Other elected representatives of the RN, in the wake of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, have taken up the issue. Laure Lavalette, MP for the Var and spokeswoman for her group at the National Assembly, said that a “national drama” would happen due to the “absolute indifference of a government that no longer controls anything”.
Emmanuel Blairy, MP for Pas-de-Calais, reacted in the same terms on his Twitter account: “What is this about? This is the filthy face of the Macron clique”.
Macron was keen to sound reassuring about the electricity cuts that are looming this winter. The President said that the government was preparing a plan to manage an “extreme” situation.
Cold weather needs an ‘extreme’ plan
While temperatures are already harsh, and power cuts are feared in the coming months, Macron sought to downplay the energy issue.
During his state visit to the United States to meet his counterpart Joe Biden, the President of the Republic gave an interview to TF1/LCI on Saturday, December 3. He did not escape a question on the energy crisis. The Head of State was adamant: “I want to clarify things here: no panic.”
According to Macron, the government is working “to prepare for an extreme case”, citing the “need to cut electricity for a few hours during the day if we were to run out”. The President continued, “It’s normal for the government to prepare for an extreme case because, as the last few years have shown us, sometimes the unthinkable happens.”
It is thus the “responsibility of the government” to work on it so that “the country is not in complete disorder”. Macron spoke of “fictitious scenarios”, such as preventing the departure of a train if a power cut is imminent, which must therefore be “prepared”.
Paris will be less affected than the rest of the country
With a large number of so-called priority sites and a very dense electricity network, the capital will not be as badly affected by energy consumption as other parts of France.
In the age of energy sobriety, the French are therefore wondering about their fate as winter approaches. As Europe1 reported on Thursday 1 December, power cuts could occur throughout France quite soon. The cause is in fact a supply problem due to the war in Ukraine, among other things, not only the decline of nuclear energy production in the country.
But the capital will be privileged and be largely less affected by power cuts than the rest of France. Indeed, Paris is home to many so-called “priority sites”, which must under no circumstances suffer from a lack of electricity in order to function properly, according to officials.
Among the priority sites are hospitals, prisons and military zones. The government has also commissioned the prefects to draw up a list of all these zones. Although the number of sites must not exceed 38 percent of the department’s electricity consumption, Paris is an exception because of the density of its electricity network and its services, which benefit the whole of France.
In the capital, only 17 percent of electricity consumption can be shed, compared with 62 percent in the rest of the country. This is a considerable gap which worries the executive. Clearly, these disparities could be considered as preferential treatment for Paris, which will be four times less affected by power cuts than the rest of France.
The murdered Ece (14) from Illerkirchberg was Alevi, lived, dressed and partied like all western teenagers. The CID is investigating whether this was the reason why the suspected killer from Eritrea stabbed the girl. Did he kill out of religious zeal?
The asylum seeker (27) from Eritrea who allegedly murdered the schoolgirl Ece (aged 14) and stabbed her best friend Nerea (aged 13) in Illerkirchberg near Ulm in Baden-Württemberg on Monday has so far remained silent on the motive for the insane crime. As reported by eXXpress, the migrant ambushed the girls on their way to school and attacked them maliciously.
The asylum seeker remains silent on the motive. He is now in a prison hospital and has not given any statements. The police are investigating whether the man from Eritrea killed for religious reasons.
Ece was an Alevi. The girl of Turkish origin, who attended a secondary school, acted like all young girls her age. Alevis reject the Islamic Sharia, the women do not veil themselves, they eat pork. For devout Muslims, they are not brothers and sisters in the faith, even traitors to the faith.
Perhaps Ece and her friend had been a thorn in the asylum seeker’s side for a long time. He has lived in the asylum centre for six years, the girls walked past it every day on their way to school. He must have known Ece and Nerva.
In the meantime, fear is running rampant in the small village. Three years ago, a girl was abused in the asylum centre. The local kindergarten is only a few metres away. Concerned mothers have now called on the mayor to finally do something about the asylum seekers or to relocate them.
The Dutch state was wrong to restrict family reunification of asylum seekers and must amend its policy to allow immediate safe passage for family members of those granted asylum within the country, a Dutch court ruled on Monday.
A judge in Haarlem issued a preliminary injunction against the government’s practice of temporarily limiting the number of asylum seekers’ family members permitted to enter the Netherlands, claiming the measure had no legal basis and, in fact, contravened Dutch asylum laws and two provisions of the European Family Reunification Directive.
The ruling came in the case of 47-year old Syrian national, Fakhria Al Mullaabid, a refugee who has been granted a residency permit in the Netherlands; she appealed against the government’s decision to delay permitting the arrival of her six children currently staying in a Sudanese refugee camp for up to six months, unless they could find suitable accommodation in the Netherlands ahead of time.
The Dutch coalition government had introduced the six-month restriction on the entry of family members of asylum seekers in an attempt to ease constraints on the asylum process and limit the number of arrivals into the country. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), which reports to State Secretary Eric van der Burg, announced the delay to family reunification in August, admitting at the time that the “painful measure was not taken lightly.”
However, the court in Haarlem ruled the move unlawful and insisted that the claimant’s family members be allowed to enter the country with temporary residence permits within 24 hours, a decision the Dutch immigration office has since said will be respected.
Dutch conservatives have criticized the decision, with Party for Freedom (PVV) Chairman Geert Wilders accusing liberal judges of giving “presents to asylum seekers” and calling the ruling “insane.”
Asylum cases in the Netherlands have skyrocketed this year, giving the Dutch government a headache over how best to respond to the influx.
The IND revealed last month that it expected the number of applications filed by the end of the year to reach between 48,200 and 55,700.
The rise in the number of applications has had a domino effect on the processing time of applications, with a statement from the IND in November explaining:
“A similar number of new asylum applications will be taken into account next year, further increasing the number of decisions to be made. The legal decision period has recently been temporarily extended from 6 to 15 months.”
Similar to other European nations, including the United Kingdom, asylum seekers in the Netherlands have been housed in alternative accommodation due to a shortage of social housing, including on board 5-star cruise ships in the port of Rotterdam, sparking fury as the cost of living for Dutch citizens spiked by 17.1 percent.
“Everything is free for asylum seekers. Nice hot food, heating, care. All for nothing on luxury cruise ships,” Wilders commented at the time the story broke.
“While our own people cannot pay their energy bills, and many elderly people are in diapers due to a lack of healthcare staff,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Dutch state has resorted to financial incentives for municipalities willing to provide accommodation for more asylum seekers. It recently passed a law giving the government power to force regions to take more refugees if they won’t cooperate willingly, a measure that has caused a deep divide within Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s VVD party.
A retired Anglican priest has been found guilty of ‘engaging in antisemitic activity’ by a Church of England investigative panel in a historic ruling.
Rev Dr Stephen Sizer was found culpable by the panel for acts that “provoked and offended the Jewish community,” according to the UK Jewish News. The investigation including examining a “serious allegation” in which the priest was found to have “engaged in antisemitic activity.”
The complaint was made to the Church of England by the Board of Deputies in 2018.
The retired priest was the vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water, in Surrey, for 20 years. He has denied the 11 allegations relating to his actions in 2005 through to 2018, including posting a link on Facebook in January 2015 to an article accusing Israel of being behind 9/11.
The hearing found that in four of the instances, Sizer’s behavior was “unbecoming to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders, in that he provoked and offended the Jewish community.”
The Church of England said in a statement after the ruling that Sizer “has committed misconduct under the Clergy Discipline Measure” and that a tribunal was “determine a penalty.”
It also said that it was “committed to building cohesive communities and fostering strong interfaith relations built on trust and respect.”
The Church added that “antisemitism has no place in our society and those in positions of power and influence must listen to concerns about it.”
Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl applauded the decision by the panel.
”I commend the tribunal’s decision in the case of Stephen Sizer. In an unprecedented judgement it was found ‘engaged in antisemitic activity’, repeated conduct ‘unbecoming of a Church of England minister and engaged in conduct that ‘provoked and offended the Jewish community over a sustained period,” Van der Zyl told the news outlet. “He was also criticized for being ‘disingenuous in his answers.’”
Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition, public domain , commons.wikimedia.org/
By Robert Arvay
Science has had a long and difficult path to its success, and to its well deserved respect over its main competitors: superstition and falsehood. Arguably, in 1945, that respect reached its zenith, with the detonation of the nuclear weapons that are credited with ending World War 2. Science-based technology literally exploded onto the public consciousness. No one could argue with its awesome demonstration of power. Nor could anyone doubt that the predictions of scientists, no matter how fantastic, must eventually come true. Why, by 1966, we will all have flying cars!
Of course, we did not. That is certainly forgivable, but scientific technology has fallen short of public expectations in more ways than just that. Some years ago, an eminent physicist published a commentary lamenting the transformation of science from an evidence-based endeavor into a proposal-based activity — a guessing game. Instead of observation, hypothesis, and experiment, physics seemed to have moved its laboratories to the blackboard. We are all familiar with the confusing maze of cryptic, Greco-Arabic symbols that describe for us such unproved pronouncements as the existence of multiple universes, subatomic strings, and “dark” physics, for none of which there is direct physical evidence. Yet these educated guesses enjoy a degree of acceptance rivaling that of confirmed experimental results, blurring the line between scientific fact and speculative conjecture.
The resulting destruction of society from corrupt scientists is appalling. Billions of people are to be impoverished by futile attempts to adjust the climate to some unspecified parameters. Untold numbers of children are being castrated and otherwise mutilated to serve the transgender gods. Inadequately tested drugs are being sold, even mandated, to prevent self-limiting diseases, while effective therapies are being suppressed. In the meantime, actual scientists who dare to report facts are being demonized and deprived of their livelihoods. Yale medical students recently shouted down a speaker rather than question his data and conclusions. Medical students! As Elon Musk might say, let that sink in. In the near future, how will we trust the medical advice of ideological M.D.s?
Matters have only gotten worse since 1945, a worsening compounded by ineptitude, fraud, and political/ideological partisan bias, not to mention money.
Ineptitude: According to a commentary in the Irish Times,
A catalogue of political mismanagement, poor communications, bureaucratic deception, dithering and scientific ineptitude is set out in the official report on the BSE crisis published yesterday by the British government. Consumers were kept in the dark about the lethal threat to human health involved.
Fraud: Quoting from Explorable dot com,
Unfortunately, there are a number of more sinister cases, where scientists deliberately fabricated results, usually for personal fame. With the advent of corporate and politically funded research grants, poor results are becoming more dictated by policy than by scientific infallibility.
Political bias and personal profit, as included in the quotes above, have also become major factors in the degree to which scientific pronouncements have become suspect.
The Medieval Dark Ages are, whether rightly or wrongly, infamous for medical procedures that caused harm, and sometimes great physical agony, to patients. The era of world wars and communism is also infamous for practices and policies by governments resulting from purported science. These included intentional genocide and unintended famine.
Clearly, as demonstrated at Yale’s medical school, the primary-school education of American and Western students has resulted in a young population entering college that is not only uninformed regarding the scientific method, but misinformed. That misinformation is the result of replacing education with indoctrination and replacing the free market of ideas with the slave market of ideology.
As we await what might become a spectacular scientific analysis by the government on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP/UFOs), there is reasonable suspicion that only a cover-up will be released. How can we place our trust in such official reporting, on this or any other topic?
Given the recent trends, it is becoming more and more likely that we will soon be entering a dark age of science. Whether literally or figuratively, we might resume burning witches while, ironically, practicing what amounts to pseudoscientific witchcraft.
