NZ Mosques reopen amid nationwide mourning

If you want to know how much of this below was genuine grief and how much was virtue signalling, try to recall a similar outpouring of grief for the many victims of Jihadi atrocities

The best of humanity was on display at the site of last week’s massacre in Christchurch. New Zealand today showed its true colours.

Members of Christchurch’s heartbroken Muslim population have returned to the site where their friends and family members were taken from them so violently a week ago.

At two mosques on New Zealand’s South Island, where 50 people were murdered last week, the Muslim call to prayer was recited for not just worshippers but for an audience around the world.

It was broadcast on national television in New Zealand and in Australia at 1.30pm local time — a moment accused killer Brenton Tarrant and those like him would never have wanted.

The call to prayer was followed by two minutes of silent reflection.

Outside the Al Noor mosque, where 42 people were killed, thousands of New Zealanders gathered. Among them were survivors and the wider Christchurch community.

Al Noor mosque imam Gamal Fouda spoke outside the mosque, telling New Zealanders that they are “unbreakable”.

“Last Friday, I stood in this mosque and saw hatred and rage in the eyes of the terrorist who killed and murdered 50 innocent people, wounded 42 and broke the hearts of millions around the world,” he said.

“Today, from the same place, I look out and I see the love and compassion in the eyes of thousands of New Zealanders and human beings from across the globe.

“This terrorist sought to tear our nation apart with an evil ideology ... but instead we have shown that New Zealand is unbreakable and that the world can see in us an example of love and unity.

“We are broken hearted, but we are not broken. We are alive, we are together. We are determined to not let anyone divide us.

“We are determined to love one another and support each other. This evil ideology of white supremacy did not strike us first yet it did strike us hardest.”

He said “hate will be undone and love will redeem us”.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has been celebrated around the world for her swift and heartfelt response to the terror attack, is expected to speak shortly.

Ms Ardern yesterday announced sweeping changes to the country’s gun laws including a buyback scheme similar to the one introduced in Australia after the Port Arthur massacre.

She banned all assault rifles, all semi-automatic weapons and all military-style weapons in a move seen as strong, progressive and necessary.

The head of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, Mustafa Farouk, said he was “so happy” the world would be a part of this afternoon’s call to worship.

“We appreciate the support that the people of New Zealand have given to us at this time, and the opportunity to do this,” he said.

The mourning will continue long after today, as more of the victims are buried. Among the dozen who were buried on Wednesday and Thursday were teenagers from local schools and 71-year-old grandfather Haji-Daoud Nabi, who reportedly told the gunman “Hello, brother” before he was shot and killed.

Students from Cashmere High School returned to the Memorial Park Cemetery in the city’s east for a second time to farewell their 14-year-old schoolmate Sayyad Ahmad Milne a day after the burial of another friend, Hamza Mustafa, 15.

More than 10,000 people marched silently on Thursday through the New Zealand city where the alleged shooter in last week’s massacre had lived, as the country paid its respects to the 50 victims of the tragedy.

Marchers made their way through Dunedin to a rugby stadium where a total of about 15,000 people eventually gathered for a sombre vigil.

The accused killer had lived for the past two years in Dunedin after moving from Grafton in New South Wales.

The marchers were joined by thousands more who had made their way there for ceremonies that included Maori incantations and Muslim prayers.

Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull called on New Zealanders to come together in support of those left bereft by the tragedy.

“We need to examine what needs to change so that this does not happen again,” he said, according to the newspaper.

“To my Muslim brothers and sisters … you are a precious part of us and we embrace you.” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced an immediate ban on the military-style semi-automatic weapons used in the slayings.

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Fox Caves to Islamist Sensibilities

The network bumped Judge Jeanine's show because she dared to question sharia.    

“This is not who your party is. Your party is not anti-Israel; [Ilhan Omar] is. Think about this. She is not getting this anti-Israel sentiment doctrine from the Democrat Party. So if it’s not rooted in the party, where is she getting it from? Think about it. Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran, 33:59, tells women to cover so they won’t get molested. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which is antithetical to the U.S. Constitution?” —Judge Jeanine Pirro, “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” Fox News

Ordinarily, one might reasonably assume that the host of an opinion show expressing an opinion, followed by a question designed to elicit debate, would be firmly inside the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

These are not ordinary times. Fox initially pulled Pirro’s show last Saturday, airing a repeat episode of its documentary series “Scandalous” in Pirro’s time slot. When asked why Pirro’s show wasn’t being aired, Fox refused to answer. “We’re not commenting on internal scheduling matters,” a spokesperson stated last Saturday. On Sunday, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that Pirro had been suspended for two weeks.

That same day, Fox released a statement denouncing Pirro’s remarks. “We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar,” it stated. “They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.” Fox also released a statement from Pirro. “I’ve seen a lot of comments about my opening statement from Saturday night’s show and I did not call Rep. Omar un-American. My intention was to ask a question and start a debate, but of course because one is Muslim does not mean you don’t support the Constitution,” Pirro said. “I invite Rep. Omar to come on my show any time to discuss all of the important issues facing America today.”

Thus, Fox joins the coordinated effort to delegitimize one of the more important realities of our time. In a 2016 column, Andrew McCarthy — a key prosecutor in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case — didn’t ask what Pirro asked about Sharia law and the Constitution. He stated it in no uncertain terms. “Sharia is antithetical to the Constitution, to the very foundational American principle that the people may make law for themselves,” he asserted.

Why? “Sharia is not religion,” he expounded. “Sharia is a totalitarian societal structure and legal corpus that anti-American radicals seek to impose.”

Not just radicals. As the National Center for Constitutional Studies explains, “shariah is held by mainstream Islamic authorities — not to be confused with ‘radical,’ ‘extremist’ or ‘political’ elements said to operate at the fringes of Islam — to be the perfect expression of divine will and justice and thus is the supreme law that must comprehensively govern all aspects of Muslims’ lives, irrespective of when or where they live.”

So, is questioning one’s religious dogma as it relates to one’s constitutional fealty out of bounds? As columnist M. Catharine Evans reminds us, it depends on who’s doing the asking. During the confirmation hearing for Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called Barrett’s Catholic beliefs “controversial.” “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein asserted. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”

Of course, Feinstein was defending one of the Left’s foremost “religious” dogmas, better known as abortion on demand — now apparently including post-birth abortion on demand. If Barrett’s “dogma” is fair game, why not Feinstein’s?

And why not Ihan Omar’s?

As Evans asserts, “When the popular Judge Jeanine gets removed from her show for confronting Jew-hatred by an elected representative, yet Omar, who had to delete anti-Semitic tweets, and who is coddled by an Islamic extremist organization known as CAIR, gets an apology, something is insanely upside-down over at Fox.”

Upside down, or indicative? In 2015, conservative-leaning Rupert Murdoch turned over control of the network to his left-leaning sons, James and Lachlan. Ever since then, the network — in what The New York Times described in 2017 as “generational change at one of the globe’s most powerful media conglomerates” aimed at ridding the network of its of “roguish, old-guard internal culture” (read: conservative) — has moved steadily leftward.

The future? Uncertain: Fox News will be spun off as a separate entity from Fox’s merger with Disney.

What is certain is that while Pirro was getting suspended, former CNN contributor and interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile was getting hired. “You can be darn sure that I’m still going to be me on FOX News,” Brazile stated. “I’m going to do what I always do: and dish it out straight, exactly as I see it, with just as much New Orleans hot sauce as folks expect.”

Dish it out straight? Brazile was tossed off CNN for collusion with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to furnish verbatim questions that would be asked during the Clinton’s 2016 primary debate with Bernie Sanders. And when Brazile was confronted, she initially lied about doing so.

Fox’s rationale for hiring her? According to an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity but claimed to know the details of her contract, Brazile will not have anything to do with campaign debates or town halls.

So what? Furthermore, considering the legions of leftists who would undoubtedly jump at the chance to work for Fox News, why would the network choose to employ a documented cheater and liar?

In the meantime, the usual suspects are playing familiar roles. “Fox News must clearly state that Jeanine Pirro will not be allowed back on the air after her long history of Islamophobic hate rhetoric, and the network must also take similar action against other Islamophobic hosts like Tucker Carlson,” declared Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) executive director Nihad Awad in a statement.

That would be the same CAIR that remains an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case — and the same Nihad Awad who declared his support for Hamas in 1994, despite its designation as a terrorist group by the federal government.

As for the term “Islamophobia,” Muslim American reformer Shireen Qudosi aptly describes it as “a term that has no tangible meaning and has extended from initially meaning ‘fear of Islam’ to being any perceived criticism toward Islam or Muslims (even if it comes from other Muslims).”

She also has a warning for those who embrace the contemptible political correctness intended to shut down that criticism. “Omar is part of a growing legislative arm of the Islamist body, a body that was already well-formed with lobbies, cultural icons, and academics,” she writes. “Yet, as a Muslim reformer, my concern is less with Omar and more so with the debilitating chaos, controversy, and polarizing communication breakdown she brings. That is what Islamists do. They create chaos because they thrive in chaos.”

Fox News is abetting that chaos. Shame on them.

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Rampant dishonesty in response to the NZ massacre

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has unleashed a barrage of openly anti-Semitic commentary. She suggested that Israel had “hypnotized the world.” She recently suggested that Jewish money lay behind American support for Israel. Finally, she suggested that American Israel supporters are representatives of dual loyalty. Her fellow Democrats shielded her from blowback by subsuming a resolution that condemns her anti-Semitism within a broader resolution that condemns intolerance of all types. Many of them suggested that labeling Omar’s anti-Semitism actually represents a type of censorship — an attempt to quash debate about Israel, though none of Omar’s comments even critiqued the Israeli government, and though many on the left have made anti-Israel arguments without invoking anti-Semitism.

Now Omar’s defenders have come out of the woodwork to suggest that criticism of her anti-Semitism was somehow responsible for the white supremacist shooting of 50 innocent people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. Two protesters, New York University students and best friends Leen Dweik and Rose Asaf, confronted Chelsea Clinton, who had gently chided Omar for her Jew hatred. “After all that you have done, all the Islamophobia that you have stoked,” Dweik screamed, “this, right here, is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words you put out in the world. … Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.” Dweik, it should be noted, has called for the complete elimination of Israel.

Her message was parroted by terror supporter Linda Sarsour, who tweeted: “I am triggered by those who piled on Representative Ilhan Omar and incited a hate mob against her until she got assassination threats now giving condolences to our community. What we need you to do is reflect on how you contribute to islamophobia and stop doing that.”

Meanwhile, mainstream commentators attempted to use the New Zealand anti-Muslim terror attack to blame critics of radical Islam. Omer Aziz, writing for The New York Times, slammed Jordan Peterson for calling Islamophobia “a word created by fascists” and Sam Harris for calling it “intellectual blood libel.” Bill Maher has come in for similar criticism; so have I, mostly for a video I cut in 2014 in which I read off poll statistics from various Muslim countries on a variety of topics, concluding that a huge percentage of Muslims believed radical things.

Here’s the truth: Radical Islam is dangerous. The Islamic world has a serious problem with radical Islam. And large swaths of the Muslim world are, in fact, hostile to Western views on matters ranging from freedom of speech to women’s rights. To conflate that obvious truth with the desire to murder innocents in Christchurch is intellectual dishonesty of the highest sort. If we want more Muslims living in liberty and freedom, we must certainly demolish white supremacism — and we must also demolish radical Islam, devotees of which were responsible for an estimated 84,000 deaths in 2017 alone, most of those victims Muslim.

And here’s another truth: Anti-Semitism is ugly, whether it’s coming from white supremacists or Ilhan Omar. Making that point has nothing to do with the killing of Muslims in Christchurch.

So long as the media continue to push the narrative that criticism of Islam is tantamount to incitement of murder, radical Islam will continue to flourish. So long as the media continue to cover for the dishonest argument that criticism of anti-Semitism forwards the goals of white supremacists, anti-Semitism will continue to flourish. Honest discussion about hard issues isn’t incitement.

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An outpouring of irrational Leftist hate comes to Australia

Last Friday, when the news broke that a gunman had killed dozens of people praying in mosques in New Zealand, ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas logged on to Twitter. In one of her tweets, she praised [PM] Scott Morrison for making an "incredibly strong" statement at a press conference after the massacre.

"He rightly described it as a right-wing terror attack," she wrote. "That is what this is."

Karvelas was impressed Morrison had highlighted the ideological nature of the attack. His response was altogether different from Trump's insistence, following the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, that there "were very fine people on both sides" of the protest.

She was instantly hit by a deluge of criticism.

"It was just one tweet about a press conference, not a dissertation about everything the Prime Minister has said about Muslims in his career. Yet it became this pile on," Karvelas says.

"People were accusing me of excusing his alleged past Islamophobia. A former ABC employee told me I should get out of journalism."

Ian Mannix, the former manager of ABC local radio Victoria, tweeted: "She fails to put it in context the years of hatred and racism against other people. If you can’t get this right, get out of the media."

Karvelas' conclusion: "We have lost the ability to be civil."

Craig Emerson, a senior cabinet minister in the Rudd-Gillard years, also praised Morrison's response - as well as the statements by Jacinda Ardern and Bill Shorten.

At an intensely upsetting and anxious moment for the Muslim community, Emerson believed all three leaders provided the strength and reassurance the moment demanded.

"I was just giving credit where it was due," he says. "I copped an avalanche of criticism."

The fact Emerson himself had taken a strong stand against white supremacy didn't matter. (Emerson quit as a Sky News commentator last year when the network hosted a soft interview with far-right leader Blair Cottrell.)

Like Karvelas, Emerson isn't precious and doesn't want pity. He doesn't even believe tribalism is inherently wrong or dangerous - political parties, after all, are tribes and so are our favourite sporting teams.

What concerns him is "mindless tribalism", the notion that you should never break with orthodoxy or give credit to a political opponent.

"This was just one isolated incident, but I do think it shows how hyper-partisan and tribal we have become," Karvelas says.

"I think most people, who are busy getting on with their lives, still value civility. But there is a noisy minority that floods the internet and skews the debate."

A similar point was made by Morrison in a speech this week when he said he was worried Australians are demonstrating "less understanding and grace towards others that we do not even know, making the worst possible assumptions about them and their motives, simply because we disagree with them".

"If we allow a culture of 'us and them', of tribalism, to take hold ... we will lose what makes diversity work in Australia," he said.

The extreme responses following Christchurch were not limited to anonymous trolls with a handful of followers.

Twitter, all too often, rewards the snarky putdown, the dogmatic over-reach, the bad-faith misinterpretation of someone's argument. Empathy won't get you much traction, and neither will nuance.

Only hours after the attack, former independent MP Tony Windsor said Morrison's "dog-whistling" had "borne fruit ... not here but on a softer target".

Marcia Langton, the chairwoman of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, went further, saying the Prime Minister and most of his government were "complicit in mass murder".

Across the Atlantic, it wasn't only Trump, who famously called for a complete and total ban on Muslims entering the US, facing similar claims.

At a vigil in New York, Chelsea Clinton was confronted by activists who said she had helped cause the massacre. "The 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there," one protester told her.

How so? Clinton had recently criticised Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar for remarks that she, and many others, believe perpetuated anti-Semitic tropes.

Last month, US author Kosoko Jackson, who is black and gay, withdrew his forthcoming novel, A Place for Wolves, from publication.

Before his book had even hit shelves, Jackson had attracted a backlash for making two non-Muslim Americans the main characters in a story about the Kosovo War.

New York Times columnist Jennifer Senior argued that Jackson's book "should have failed or succeeded in the marketplace of ideas. But it was never given the chance. The mob got to it first."

After the Christchurch attacks, comedian Adam Hills was pilloried when he tweeted that he was "not OK" with Anning being egged as it would embolden his supporters.

One user's succinct response: "Adam Hills is cancelled."

Unlike the US, Australia's political discourse hasn't yet been carried away on a wave of toxic tribalism. But we're swimming in the same waters and it's worth thinking about whether we want to venture any further from the shore.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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