A Historical Nightmare
by
Internet and David Verveer
It started out as a parable, to demonstrate the danger of Radical
Islamic Terrorism.
To my surprise, most of the fiction used in my parable, turned out to
be somehow, historically correct.
Most of the material used in this work was obtained from newspaper
articles on the Internet.
I do not hate Islam and Islamic people, I do not understand them, and I
am worried of their goals.
Here in Israel we are relatively safe, as we are capable in defending
ourselves, even though, the world blames us for cruelty.
Europe is practically defenseless, as it is invaded and manipulated by
the radical Islamic forces, without them realizing it.
Part 1 of this work, are news stories that occurred in realty over the
last 10 years in Holland and Belgium, but they continue to talk about
immigrant rights?
PLEASE WAKE UP!!
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Introduction
It all started with a email response by a Dutch friend during the 2nd Lebanon war, who had compassion for the poor Lebanese victims, bombed and killed by the Israeli Air force.
I decided to write a short fictional Belgium / Dutch border dispute, initiated by growing Islam terrorism in Europe, kindled by vague (and fictional) historical claim by Belgium, and exploited by Islamic terrorists in order to terrorize the region, all based on pure fiction, my sick mind , etc., however I was in for a big surprise.
The Dutch / Belgium border, today invisible, has been quiet since the battle of Waterloo and the Belgium war of independence several years later, and absolutely without any accidents or warring parties, (hopefully it will remain this way). I created fictional border friction, as my before mentioned friend lives close to this border, and I assumed that by using it as an example, it will serve his comprehension on what happened and is happening here in the Middle East.
I built up the story, basing it on fictional peoples and combining it with historical events, but to my surprise when I started to do some research on those fictional events, I found to my utter astonishment that most of them are somehow based on facts, occurring the last ten years and still going on today.
I am today convinced that growing Radical Islam idealism in Western Europe is an undeniable fact and the past war in Lebanon is only a spear-head of a future European or even Global war. I hope we (Israel) will overcome the aftermath of the 2nd Lebanon war crisis and thus postpone a global conflict because if we loose this one, we will be the first victims of this war, which will reduce the 2nd World War into a small local skirmish.
1 - Even-though the "Ravenstein" story is based on historical facts, the area is never been claimed ((as far as I know) by Belgium.
2 – The Political strength of Radical Islam in Belgium and Holland is still relatively controllable, but we have to realize, they (the Muslims) do not play according the democratic principles, even though, some of them are democratic elected (just as the Nazi party in Germany).
3 – I combined some interactions between Muslims and local population in order to compare my story with events of the Lebanese war. Some of those events have not (yet) occurred.
4 – Of course, some of the names I used in this story are fictions (I hope) .
5 – Let us hope that my current pessimistic understanding of the world and local political situation are caused by non comprehension of the situation, and that we are starting now a period of lasting peace and tranquility.
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6 –And please remember, when we were children, the Nazis were the bad boys endangering the world, later on, the Russian communists took over, which were replaced by the Chinese and North Korea, now we worry about the Islam, it appears we need a frightening growing power, in order to be satisfied with what we have today.
7 – But friends, wake up, we are invaded, occupied and threatened, and being nice and humanistic, wont help this time. The 9/11, the London bombings, the Paris Riots, the Madrid train explosions, the attempted in -flight attacks, the bomb attacks in Turkey, Tunis, Bombay, Argentina, etc. etc., are not local affairs but a clear orchestrated and planned pattern of organized international terrorism. This occurs according a scheme in comprehensible to our Western reasoning.
David Verveer,
August 2006 / May 2007
Kfar Saba, Israel
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The “Ravenstein Beauties”.
The “Ravenstein Beauties” were an independent state / princedom ( from 1360 until 1800) during the "Ancien Regime and followers" situated near the today large industrial town of Oss in the Dutch Province of North Brabant. “Ravenstein” was established in 1360 by Count “Walraven van Valkenburg”, a vassal of the Duke of Brabant. “Walraven” built his Castle on the western shore of the river Meuse. Around the castle a village grew that received its town rights in 1380.
In one of the many local wars, (1393) the ruler of “Ravenstein” was captured and imprisoned by the “Duce of Kleef”, who than became the new owner of “the Beauties of Ravenstein” .
In the “Gullik-Kleef” struggle , caused by childless death in 1609 of “John William of Kleef and Gullik”, the Spanish armies (in 1621) conquered the property.
In 1624 the territory went to “the Kingdom of Brandeburg”, but in 1630, it was transferred to “the dynasty of Palts-Neuburg”. All these local counts and kings were vassals of “the great Roman Empire” and later on, “the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands”. Only in 1800, “Ravenstein” became finally part of the “Dutch Batavian Republic”, and in 1811, part of “the Kingdom of the Netherlands”. Unlike most of the so called “Spanish Beauties” of those days were handed over to the newly created “Kingdom of Belgium”, some of them completely surrounded by Dutch territories (Baarle Nassau and Baarle Hertog), still existing as Belgium enclaves in the Netherlands .
In my story, the new Belgium government claims immediate return of “the Ravenstein Beauties”, based on the fact that all “Spanish Beauties” belong to Belgium. Not unlike the Shaabah farms bordering Lebanon – Syria and Israel, (the so called reason exploited by the Hezbollah for fighting Israel), ”the Ravenstein Beauties” as real estate, would have considerable commercial and industrial value, as explained further on. In actual fact, rulers of “the house of Kleef” never officially surrendered their claim on “the Ravenstein Beauties”, and the Belgium Royal family (closely related to the “Kleef dynasty”) still goes by the title of "Barons of Ravenstein".
The castle of “Ravenstein” was completely dismantled in 1889.
According to records I found, the last owner of the entire estate (the Beauties) was Baroness Josina Geertruida van Nassau Latecq, the last descendant of an illegitimate branch of the Dutch Royal Family (bastard son of Mauritz of Orange Nassau, brother of William I, leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish).
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The above mentioned Lady was forced to sell her estate, due to enormous debts inherited from her father Baron Louis Theo II van Nassau Latecq. It is not known to whom the estate (the beauties) were sold. This must have taken place between the years 1795 and 1800.
The Batavian Republic (for runner of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) in 1798
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RAVENSTEIN This was a small barony in the northeast of the Dutch province of Brabant, on the left bank of the river Meuse.
· Diederik of Renen................................ 12th cent.
· Sophie (fem.)............................. fl. 1191-1203
· CUIJK
· Albert (I).............................. fl. 1191-1233
· Rutger I................................ fl. 1226-1267
· Albert I................................ fl. 1268-1297
· Rutger II............................... fl. 1301-1324 with...
· Albert II............................... fl. 1278-1308
· Maria (fem.).............................. fl. 1315-1327
with...
· VALKENBURG-CLEVES
· John......................................... 1328-1356
· Walram....................................... 1356-1378
· Reinald...................................... 1378-1396
· SALM
· Simon............................................ 1396 d. 1397
· To Cleves.................................... 1396-1448
· CLEVES-Ravenstein
· Adolph....................................... 1448-1492
· Philip....................................... 1492-1528
· To Cleves.................................... 1528-1609
· To Brandenburg............................ 1609/14-1629
· To Palatinate-Neuburg........................ 1629-1742
· To Palatinate-Neuburg-Sulzbach............... 1742-1777
· To Bavaria................................... 1777-1794
· To France.................................... 1794-1800
· To Batavian Republic......................... 1800-1806
· To Kingdom of Holland....................... 1806-1810
· To France.................................... 1810-1813/14
· To Kingdom of the Netherlands since 1814...
In the twentieth Century “Ravenstein” town became a bustling important industrial center, situated on an important train junction (German Industrial Ruhr Area, Belgium Coal and Steel Mines connecting Western Holland, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and the Hague). A few years back, “Ravenstein” town was incorporated into the Industrial town of Oss.
In the early eighties, Holland entirely converted to local extracted Earth Gas Energy. In 1970, The National Gas Union created a major booster station on the 8,000 KM long gas pipeline in “Ravenstein”, which makes “Ravenstein” one of the most secured places in the Netherlands.
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Security yes, but the Dutch never considered possible terrorism until February 1972. This brings me to the next story on Ravenstein, slightly relevant to my thesis.
Terrorism in Ravenstein
As mentioned before, the security of the Ravenstein Gas Station involving the prevention of accidental fire and explosions was one of the highest in the world, but it never conceived to cover danger of terrorist actions. Who, in his right mind would try to blow up the Dutch Gas production network, why even consider it, just like other public buildings and transport (excepting international flights) that are not (yet) secured in Holland. This is also the reason, that when the smoke retreated on that fateful Sunday morning, they discovered that the fire was not caused by a spontaneous explosion but that outsiders had tried to explode the station, entering the premises by cutting an hole in the fence surrounding the booster station. This happened in the night because there are no night security personnel. At the same time, yet another booster station (Ommen) on the Gas pipeline was visited by the same organization of terrorists, but there they did not succeed in exploding anything, but left some explosives. The damages of the explosion at Ravenstein were relatively small; it took one week to repair, leaving an entire nation without gas. The Dutch papers declared that this was the largest terrorist action ever, in the Netherlands, while nobody new who would do, or why, such despicable act of senseless terrorism.
Small non important radical action groups were suspected, such as the leftist Red Youth action group, but soon cleared from suspicion. A few weeks later, a similar terrorist act in Koln, Germany, where 5 Jordanians were killed in action, brought the suspicion on the Palestinian Terrorist Organization El Fatah's "Black September" a forerunner of the El Qaeda terrorist network.
The Interpol succeeded in determining that the explosives used in all these attacks were Russian made, and used by terrorists in the Far East. Then a Dutch girl was arrested when arriving to Israel’s airport in 1971, trying to pass Airport Security with a bag of the same kind of explosives, handed to her by her Jordanian boy friend.
In November '72, two people were arrested in Paris, and after interrogation, charged for the murder of the Syrian writer "Kannou", (they were an Algerian by the name of Haboudiche, and a French Journalist Theresa Levebre), They also both admitted having participated in the attacks on Ravenstein and Ommen Gas Booster stations.
The Dutch Police requested that the prisoners to be transferred to their jurisdiction, but the French refused on grounds that murder is a far more serious crime.
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A peculiar fact is that there are no records of the French ever prosecution the case, nor were the French prepared to relate what happened to those terrorists. 
The reason that the gas-pipe explosion caused relatively minor damage was due to a lack in comprehension of the terrorists on explosiveness of pressurized "heavier than air" bio-gas, which needs availability of huge quantities of oxygen, in order to sustain a major explosion.
Until now, no one knows why the Netherlands was terrorized; perhaps this was only a training mission for future greater deeds of El Qaeda and El Fattah.
(Most of the data comes from an article by Karin van Born)
The town of “Maaseik” in Belgium
We now go to a pastoral small town, 100 km east of Ravenstein, up river the Meuse, just over the Dutch border in Belgium. Maaseik, is situated in the far North-East corner of Belgium, the Flemish (Dutch) speaking part of the Belgium province of Limburg.
Upon a morning in 2004, the phones of the town police station started ringing, and panic stricken people started to shout that black hooded masked people walked in the main square, and scared the children (and parents) to tears.
It turned out that those 6 hooded people were female Islamic residents of Maaseik, who were displaying their Muslim piety by wearing "burqas", garments that veiled their faces, including their eyes.
After the calm was restored, the mayor of Maaseik summoned those 6 women to his office, where he pointed out that he did not object to their garments, but covering of the faces, was not permitted. The women objected, and pointed out that they were the true believers of the holy book, the Quran, where is written that women should cover their faces in order not to appear attractive for other men, other than their husbands.
What was not known to the elders of Maaseik that the husbands of those ladies recently had joined a radical Islamic movement, and terrorist organization, which was spreading its wings across Europe.
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In Maaseik lived at that time approximately 800 people from Moroccan origin in a population of total 24,000 inhabitants. They built a new Mosque, and imported a radical sheikh (Islamic priest) who converted his flock to a terrorist cell. In addition, a known terrorist named Haski choose his domicile in Maaseik.
Over the next 6 months the Belgium police arrested 5 men, charged with membership in a terrorist organization, (the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group), a fast growing network known by its French initials "GICM".
The Rumors that radicals were living in Maaseik spread to the offices of the Belgium State Police in Brussels, who opened a surveillance operation in the summer of 2002. At first, intelligence officials suspected the Maaaseik group was a crime ring smuggling illegal farm workers into Limburg. The agents dubbed their mission "Operation Asparagus", after the vegetable that is widely grown in this region (requiring huge manpower recources) . As months passed, concern grew.
In November 2003, several key figures in the GICM traveled to Maaseik from France and Spain for a rare meeting, according Spanish and French court documents. The GICM European cells normally avoided direct contact with each other so that they wouldn't attract attention from the police. But the network had seen several of its leaders arrested in Morocco after terrorist bombings in Casablanca six months earlier and was trying to regroup, the court documents show. Maaseik was emerging as an important hub.
Among those attending the meeting was Lahoussine Haski, a Moroccan with a history of fighting for radical Islamic causes in Chechnya, Afghanistan and other places. Haski arrived in Maaseik holding a false passport, on the run from authorities in Morocco who had issued a warrant for his arrest on terrorist charges. In Saudi Arabia, he was listed by the government as one of the 26 most wanted terrorist suspects in the kingdom, for his alleged role in a series of bombing.
After months of hiding out in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, Haski needed a refuge, and Maaseik seemed safe. He married a local woman, who later on a part of the group, causing the ruckus in town by donning their black burqas, as described in the beginning of this chapter.
European intelligence officials acknowledged they had under estimated the presence of Moroccan radicals. In the next two years, police broke up GICM cells in Italy, Belgium, Spain, France and the Netherlands. Some intelligence officials characterize the GICM as a loose alliance of cells that operate independently. Other say there is evidence that the network is more structured and that sleeper cells bide their time until they receive orders from the central leadership.
In April 2004, French police arrested six alleged GICM members in Paris and charged them with supporting a "terrorist enterprise" .Just like in Maaseik, however, investigators did not find evidence that a specific plot was in the work. The Maaseik cell began to unravel in January 2004, when Khalid Bouloudo, a pastry chef, born in the town, was stopped by the Dutch police, across the border in the Netherlands, for driving with a broken taillight.
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After a routine records check, officers discovered he was wanted on a terrorism warrant in Morocco and took him into custody. The arrest jeopardized a surveillance operation being conducted by Belgian state security officials, who had not notified Maaseik's leaders of their investigation. After dodging questions from angry residents who wondered how a suspected terrorist could have been in their midst, Belgium federal police rounded up four other GICM suspects in mid March.
With each arrest, the police discovered fresh evidence that made the small town of Maaseik, the center of an terrorist network which had spread its wings across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The suspects of the Madrid train explosions that took place in March 2004 and killed 191 people, served as haven for the plotters. Maaseik, became in the mean time, the international capital for the GICM.
The Interpol is convinced that the Maaseik terrorist organization is the core of most of the current Islamite terrorist activities in Europe.
In early June 2004, the Belgium police was tipped off by Italian anti-terrorist police about Moroccan suspect in Brussels. In wiretapped conversations recorded by the Italians, the man was overheard telling another radical in Milan that he and three friends were ready to carry out suicide attacks in Belgium. Belgium police responded with several raids and made 15 arrests in what they called "Operation Asparagus 2". All but one of the suspects was later released, however, and it is unclear what, if anything, they were planning.
More arrests followed. In July 2004, Belgium police nabbed Lahoussine Haski, the most wanted suspect in Saudi Arabia in Maaseik after he returned from a trip to Syria and Turkey. Two months later, they arrested another Maaseik’ man and charged him with membership in the GICM.
In December, Spanish police arrested Haski's brother, Hassan Haski, in the Canary Islands and charged him with trying to set up another GICM cell to launch attacks on the Spanish Main land. Investigators later concluded that Hassan Haski had visited Maaseik on six or seven occasions.
In Maaseik, residents still find it hard to believe that their town served as a hub for an international terrorist network. In attempt to contain extremism, the town passed a law that bans anyone from wearing a burqa. Five of the six Maaseik women who kicked off the burqa controversy have agreed to obey the ordinance. The only holdout: Samira Haski, wife of one of the GICM defendants and sister of another. She is challenging the measure in court.
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The Diamond Trade in Antwerp
200 km west of Maaseik is Belgium's main port and second largest town, Antwerp. Antwerp is known not only for its harbor, but also for the World's most important Diamond trade and handling center, which was started in the years 1700 by Sephardic Jews fleeing from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. Upon current times, the main diamond traders are very religious Jews (Hasidim) which dress in black colored Mid European Ghetto style, with large hats and side curls. The group is relative small, in comparison with the continuous growing immigrants from Islam countries (mostly from Morocco and Turkey). These groups do not live in peace together and lately several Jews have been molested (and murdered) by young Islamic youth. The local police are helpless in providing safety to their Jewish population, as the riots and attacks seem to be spontaneous not organized by any of the Muslim organizations. The strong representation of Flemish extremists in the town, who are anti Islam, just as they are Anti Jews, provide continuously fire required for causing racial explosions.
In the American daily, The Washington Post of November the second, the following heading could be read. "The "Al Qaeda" terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden, has reaped millions of dollars in the past three years from illicit sale of diamonds mined by rebels in Sierra Leone, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials.
Diamond dealers working directly with men named by the FBI as key operatives in the bin Laden' "Al Qaeda" network bought gems from the rebels at below-market prices and sold them in large profits in Europe. Since July, the sources said, the diamond dealers have changed their tactics, buying far more diamonds than usual and paying premium prices for them. Investigators said that is a strong indication that "Al Qaeda" perhaps anticipated its accounts would be frozen after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., sought to protect its money by sinking it into gemstones. A commodity that can be easily hidden holds its value and remains almost untraceable.
Small packets of diamonds, often wrapped in rags or plastic sheets, are taken by senior Sierra Leone rebels across the porous Liberian border to Monrovia. There is a safe house protected by the Liberian government. The diamonds are exchanged for briefcases of cash brought by diamond dealers who fly several times a month from Belgium to Monrovia, where they are escorted by special state security through customs and immigration control.
The diamond dealers are selected by Ibrahim Bah, a Libyan trained former Senegalese rebel and the Sierra Leone's rebels principal diamond dealer. The buyer’s identities are only known to Bah and a few others.
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Bah has a distinguished terrorist background, from fighting with the Casamance separatist movement in Senegal in the 1970th, trained in Libya by Gaddafi, spend several years in the early 1980th fighting alongside Muslim guerillas against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Bah then joined the Iranian backed Hezbollah militia to fight Israeli forces in southern Lebanon at the end of the 1980th before returning to Libya. There he trained several men who would go on to lead rebellions in West Africa, including Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone. According intelligence sources, Bah now acts as conduit between Sierra Leone rebel leaders and buyers both from Hezbollah and El Qaeda. It is estimated that Bah has brokered at about $75 million.
The paper continues to explain the wide spread sales and involvement in international crimes and terrorism, on itself terrifying reading, but not directly related to our story.
From the above article we learn that since the 1998, when contact was made to finance the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Bah, through several Lebanese businessmen based in Belgium, has steadily expanded his operations in Monrovia. Sources identified the key brokers working with Bah as Aziz Nassur and Sammy Ossailly, two Lebanese diamond dealers based in Antwerp.
Footballer jailed at terror trial
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- A Tunisian-born former professional soccer player has been jailed for 10 years for plotting to attack a NATO base in Belgium on behalf of al Qaeda.
A court in Brussels convicted Nizar Trabelsi of planning to detonate a car bomb at the Kleine Brogel air base, which houses U.S. soldiers. Judge Claire de Gryse announced the verdict Tuesday after reviewing evidence presented during the four-month trial. The court also
convicted two other North African-born militants of being accomplices in the assassination by al Qaeda collaborators of Afghan rebel commander Ahmed Shah Masood in 2001.
A total of 18 accused Islamic militants, mainly of North African origin, were convicted of a range of offences in Belgium's biggest terrorism trial, which began in May. Five suspects were acquitted.
Prosecutors said Trabelsi, 33, who played for German Bundesliga team Fortuna Dusseldorf in the 1980s, met al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden several times in Afghanistan before accepting the suicide mission. He was arrested in Brussels soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. His arrest led to the discovery of the raw materials for a huge bomb in the back of a Brussels restaurant. "Everything points to the fact that on the evening before his arrest, he was determined to carry out this project," de Gryse said passing sentence at the heavily guarded Brussels Criminal Court.
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"He tried to commit one of the most heinous crimes Belgium has ever known since independence," she said. Trabelsi's lawyer, Didier de Quevy, told Reuters he would appeal against the verdict "without a doubt." Trabelsi has denied allegations, made by a terrorist suspect held in France that he plotted to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris. An investigation in that case is continuing in France.
Because Belgium has no specific anti-terrorist laws, Trabelsi was charged with attempting to destroy public property, illegal arms possession and membership in a private militia. Two other militants, Algerian-born Amor Sliti and Tunisian-born Tarek Maaroufi, were convicted of recruiting militants and trafficking in false passports linked to the murder of Masood, who fought the ousted Taliban regime. Maaroufi was jailed for six years and Sliti for five. Two stolen Belgian passports were found on the bodies of Masood's killers, who blew themselves up while conducting a mock television interview with the rebel leader in September 2001. The prosecutor accused Maaroufi and Sliti of recruiting volunteers for guerrilla training in Afghanistan.
Maaroufi had already spent time in a Belgian prison for trafficking arms to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which is fighting to overthrow the military-backed government in Algeria. He is wanted in Italy for allegedly helping plan an attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome.
Journey of Belgian female 'bomber'
Muriel Degauque, who is believed to have died in Baghdad as an Islamic suicide bomber at the age of 38, grew up near the Belgian factory town of Charleroi.
A neighbor remembers her as an "absolutely normal" little girl who liked to go for sled rides when it snowed. The woman whose passport was reportedly found at the scene of the failed suicide attack converted to Islam when she was in her 30s. She became "more Muslim than Muslim" after meeting her second husband and grew increasingly estranged from her family, her mother Liliane Degauque told Belgian and French media.
Her husband Issam Goris, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, is believed to have been shot dead in Iraq by US troops as he tried to launch a suicide bomb attack himself. Hearing television reports of a Belgian woman who had blown herself up in Iraq on 9 November, Liliane straightaway thought it was her daughter, she recalled afterwards. She had been unable to contact her by telephone for three weeks. Muriel and her husband had reportedly traveled to Turkey from where they entered Iraq.
No TV, no beer
Muriel grew up Monceau-sur-Sambre, near Charleroi, the daughter of factory worker Jean and medical secretary Liliane. Before marrying, she had worked at a bakery and a cafe but she has also been described by media as a runaway who dabbled in drugs. She donned the veil of Islam when she met her first husband, whom she later divorced. But it was after her second marriage that her new religion began to be really felt, according to Liliane.
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She would wear a head-to-toe chador and insist on eating separately from her own father when at home, where "there could be no question of turning on the TV or opening a beer", her parents said. When her mother spent time in hospital, she never visited her and later said she had had no "time for that".
Early trauma
A neighbor told Belgium's Le Soir newspaper that the death of Muriel's brother Jean-Paul in a road accident when she was still a teenager had marked her life. "Muriel would tell me that it was she who should have died instead of her brother. Everyone had loved him," Andrea Dorane said. A Dutch-based terrorism expert who spoke to AP news agency said converts to Islam like Muriel Degauque were often easy prey for extremists because of their search for a new identity. "They are looking for... a new sense to their life," said Edwin Bakker. According to Belgian federal police director Glenn Audenaert, it was the first time a Belgian woman - if not a Western woman - had been "converted up to the point of becoming a jihad fighter". Liliane Degauque said she had not expected her daughter to die as she had and was "angry at those who manipulated her"
Dyab Abou Jahjah, the Islamic political leader
Our next story, after having discussed the creation of various Islamic movements and their actions, and after we reported how they were financed, we will now discuss the politic power, for which we remain in Antwerp.
But before going into politics and tell you about Mr. Jahjah and his friends, some facts and figures:
In Belgium were in the year 1998, approximately 350,000 Moslems, but end 2005 this number has risen to 450,000 people (+/- 2.5 % of the total Belgium population).
Belgium has the 7th largest Moslem population in Western Europe.
Quoting Hafid, a Belgium Moslem, "many of us are angry, you can't get a job, you can't get an apartment and most of the Belgians don't even speak to you. That is why a riot is like a party".
To his supporters, Dyab Abou Jahjah is a hero, a champion of Europe's Muslim immigrant underclass. But to many Belgians, the young, Lebanese born activist embodies the Continent's growing fear of extremism within its Muslim population.
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Now, the man sometimes called the "Belgian Malcolm X" was attempting un-successfully to make a leap from activism to political office: He tried running for a parliamentary seat in a heated election in which immigration is a pivotal issue. Mr. Jahjah's confrontational style is forcing Belgians to consider questions echoing elsewhere in Europe: Are immigrants welcome? What does it mean to be an European? Railing against high minority unemployment and government inertia, Jahjah says he wants to form a continent-wide political movement to defend Muslim rights. "I am not going to be docile, I am not going to tell you what you want to hear", he says repeatedly in public appearances, separating himself from the main stream moderate Muslim politicians who have emphasized integration.
He is Dyab Abou Jahjah, 31, born in Lebanon, the founder of the Arab European League, a new immigrant protest movement.
February, 2004 he is working his mobile phone in his sparsely furnished home in Antwerp because by order of a judge he is banned for three months from public events. But the news from the street cheers him. Marchers carry his photograph, some wear masks that show his face. "I hate this, being stuck here," he said. "The police probably wished I was there so they could arrest me."
Well, perhaps not. In November he was held for five days on charges of incitement to riot but released for lack of evidence. Belgium's Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, called him a "threat to society." It quickly turned him into a demon, and a hero. The result has been a flood of television appearances, newspaper articles, magazine covers and new recruits for his Arab European League.
"Recruiting is not hard," he said. "We're a civil rights movement, not a club of fundamentalist fanatics who want to blow things up. We're different because we are neither apologists nor extremists. We have such an appeal because we are filling a gap."
Mr. Abou Jahjah says he is part of a new generation of Muslim activists who are speaking out, frustrated with what they call discrimination, the lack of hope of finding a job, the problems of renting outside immigrant ghettos and, since Sept. 11, the distrust and even Islamic-phobia they feel.
Older immigrants who arrived from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey some 30 years ago, these activists say, have been too meek, too passive, co-opted by government funds or divided by ethnic or nationalist infighting.
The Arab European League founded by Mr. Abou Jahjah two years ago, aims to empower Muslim immigrants. He demands affirmative action in schools, in the workplace, in housing. His premise: Arabs in Europe will only be taken seriously if they are proud and strong. "In Europe, the immigrant organizations are Uncle Toms," he said. "We want to polarize people, to sharpen the discussion, to unmask the myth that the system is democratic for us.
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"The league's program calls on Muslim immigrants to resist pressures to integrate. "Assimilation is cultural rape," he said. "It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others."
He finds inspiration in Malcolm X and his movement in the United States for racial pride. "Of course the context is different," he said, "but Malcolm X was also against assimilation. He fought for civil rights and he was also inspired by Islam." Mr. Abou Jahjah's followers are hard to quantify. Hundreds of young men and women have shown up at street rallies. A few dozen have participated in the so-called video patrols to film the Antwerp police, who the league says abuse Arab youths verbally and physically. They have distributed fliers saying: "Bad cops, the Arab European League is watching you." There is no headquarters; regulars meet at an Antwerp Internet cafe.
Critics say the prime minister and the minister of interior have overreacted. Mr. Abou Jahjah's influence is overrated, they argue, yielding more publicity than sting. But Mr. Abou Jahjah says his Arab pride movement is already echoing elsewhere. His group has recently set up chapters in three Dutch cities, and he says he has been invited to France and Britain to start chapters.
Articulate, fast-talking, self-assured, he is indeed different from many Muslims here, who have largely come from the interior of Morocco, Turkey and Algeria. Growing up in Lebanon, the son of university teachers, Mr. Abou Jahjah said he joined the Hezbollah resistance against Israel. "I had some military training, I'm still very proud of that," he said. In 1991, at age 19, he left. "I wanted to go abroad like a lot of Lebanese young people." He said he was accepted at the University of Michigan, but because of the Persian Gulf war, he did not get an American visa. He tried France, then Belgium, where he applied for political asylum.
"Most asylum seekers invent a story and I said I had had a conflict with the Hezbollah leaders," Mr. Abou Jahjah said. "It was just a low political trick to get my papers. Now they want to use this against me." His marriage to a Belgian woman was brief, but it gave him Belgian citizenship. His wife said later that she was tricked into the marriage and tried unsuccessfully to sue him. It is hard to know the truth.
Now he has a degree in political science and speaks five languages. He has done odd jobs for a trade union and an immigrant organization. His chief lieutenant, Ahmed Azzuz, is studying law. There are others who are well-versed in law and politics. The group's manifesto says, "You do not receive equal rights, you take them."
Mr. Abou Jahjah's demands — Islamic schools, bilingual education for Arab children, hiring quotas for immigrants — are resented in this small nation of 10 million that struggles with its own identity. Belgium's long linguistic conflicts have been tentatively settled in the Constitution, which recognizes Dutch, French and German as official languages, though they still coexist uneasily. So there was an outcry when Mr. Abou Jahjah demanded that Arabic be added to the mix.
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"People freaked out over that," he said. "Why not," he added, with a quasi innocence. "There are 70,000 German speakers and more than 300,000 Arab speakers." That mix, he has been told, grew historically. "I say history is not over." Indeed, Mr. Abou Jahjah makes a point of causing consternation, above all in Antwerp, the country's second largest city, where he lives. Depending on who is talking, this city of half a million people is an exemplary ethnic mix, a cauldron or a wake-up call for Europe.
Antwerp is the base of the far-right Flemish Bloc, a party that won one-third of the seats on the City Council with the slogan, "Our people first." It is also home to Belgium's largest group of Jews, many of them linked to the diamond trade. Add to this a large immigrant population, up to one-third of them unemployed, said Mr. Abou Jahjah. After unruly anti-Israel protests April 2003 and more riots in November, when shops and a synagogue in the Jewish quarter were vandalized, the mayor warned that the Arab protesters were importing the Middle Eastern conflict and threatening the peace.
Filip Dewinter, the outspoken leader of the Flemish Bloc, said Mr. Abou Jahjah must be stripped of his Belgian citizenship and deported "because he lied about his refugee status and had a phony marriage." Mr. Dewinter regards Mr. Abou Jahjah as "a foreign agent, directed and paid from abroad." At home, with his brother Ziad, a businessman, Mr. Abou Jahjah said the police had recently searched their homes and taken their computers, bank statements, "even Ziad's wedding pictures." There is nothing to hide, he said. Money comes from members in Belgium and several private donors in Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose names he has posted on the League's Web site, arabeuropean.org.
In May 2004, Jahjah ran un-successfully in the Belgian parliamentary elections. No, he did not intent to support any of the six Muslims — Turks and Moroccans — already in Parliament. "They never defended the rights of immigrants," he said. "They don't want to rock the boat.We do. We're not guests here. We are citizens."
Handsome, clean shaven, often dressed in jeans, Jahjah is a charismatic debater. With a master's degree in international politics and fluency in four languages, he has all the right European credentials. Since founding the Arab European League (AEL) several years ago, he has attracted a following of thousands of jobless, frustrated young immigrants who feel shut out by mainstream European society. The AEL now has growing branches in France and the Netherlands.
Police have blamed Jahjah for fomenting racial violence. They have also investigated him for alleged links with criminal elements and for suspected funding from extremist organizations in the Middle East.
The Muslim moderates, such as Mimount Bousakla, a young member of the Antwerp district council, questions the activist's motives. "Who is Jahjah?, she muses. He is just a guy from the Middle East, who wants to fight the conflict they have there in the streets of Antwerp".
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Most Belgians first heard of Jahjah November 2003, after his arrest for allegedly inciting race riots after a mentally disturbed Belgian killed a young Islamic religion teacher. Five days later, Jahjah was released because of insufficient evidence. (The police could not find any people prepared to relate what was said during public meetings). This incident thrust the topics of immigration and prejudice- which the mainstream politicians had been reluctant to openly discuss- into the limelight, revealing deep cultural divisions and resentment between predominantly Catholic Belgians and the countries 450,000 Muslims. AEL activities have fanned many Belgians worst fears about the group's motives. Weeks before the October riots, the AEL organized Muslim civilian patrols to monitor alleged police brutality in immigrant neighborhoods in Antwerp. The patrols carried video cameras and they wore black, which reminded older Belgians of the black uniforms of prewar Nazi brigades.
In Antwerp, which Jahjah refers to as the international capital of Zionism, due to its large Orthodox Jewish population, the AEL organized a pro-Palestinian rally April 2004 that drew 3,000 young Muslims, with protesters chanting "jihad" and "Osama bin Laden" The march ended in riots in Antwerp's commercial center.
AEL was founded and is led by Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Shi'a Muslim living in Belgium. Jahjah, a former member of Hezbollah, left Lebanon in 1991 to begin university
studies in Belgium. In July 2006, Abou Jahjah returned to Lebanon to join the battle against the Israeli Defense Forces, as he felt he had the duty to protect his people. Before he left for
Lebanon, he wrote a farewell message on the Arab European League website:
"Some people call it a fight for god, some people call it a fight for mankind, in essence it is one and the same fight for freedom and justice." [
April 29, 2003
Terrorism, the AEL and porn
The Dutch secret service AIVD presented its annual report for 2002, spending considerable time on the threat of Islamic terrorism and the recruiting of terrorists in the Netherlands:
Despite recent successes in the battle against terrorism, Islamic terror networks are still capable of carrying out attacks all over the world, according to the 2002 annual report of the Dutch secret service AIVD.
Caretaker Interior Minister Johan Remkes presented the report to Parliament on Tuesday. The AIVD said radical Islamic networks are also active in the Netherlands and the groups generally play a supporting, rather than a front-line terrorist, role by giving financial, material and logistical assistance to terror cells.
The Dutch groups also recruit young men for the holy war, or jihad, against the "enemies of Islam," the AIVD alleged. This is a repeat of its claim, made in December 2002 that dozens of young Muslim men were in training.
But Dutch security authorities have not brought any alleged terrorists to justice since the September 11 attacks in the US. This is nothing particularly new, but it underscores the activities of Islamic-fascist organization in the Netherlands.
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The Saudis have been financing a lot of this, even to the point where Dutch politicians are now calling for the government to take action against Saudi Arabia. But at the same time, the AIVD's report also shows that while awareness of surveillance of various extremist Islamist groups has increased, there has been little tangible progress. The arrests that were made last year evaporated in the increasingly risible Dutch justice system.
One of the groups mentioned in the report is the Arab-European League, founded in Belgium and now establishing itself firmly in the Netherlands: The AIVD emphasized that groups — such as the Arab European League (AEL) in the Netherlands and Belgium — which play on creating a Muslim identity and religious or ethnic sentiment, are a security risk.
The leader of the Dutch AEL has not formally been instated yet, but it's likely to be Mohammed Cheppih, who is known to be funded by the Saudis in role as chairman of the Muslim World League in the southern Dutch town of Tilburg: Islamic centers in Amsterdam and Eindhoven have been singled out as particular hotbeds of Muslim extremists and a report in newspaper Het Parool said two hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, including Mohammed Atta, possibly received ideological training at the El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam. Wilders and VVD colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali have demanded the mosque's closure. The Islamic conference was organized by a foundation which the intended chairman of the Arab European League in the Netherlands, Mohammed Cheppih, is involved with and Atta and another hijacker possibly attended at Eindhoven or Amsterdam.
The AEL is a profoundly dangerous organization because its founder Abu Jahjah knows how to play the democratic game. He's not just another ranting zealot, but he's proving adept at using the rhetoric and paraphernalia of a bona fide democratic movement as a cover for his radical Islamism. But he does conform to one of the more culturally invariant features of shady populist leaders in that he does not really practice what he preaches. Abu Jahjah was under investigation in Belgium last year for his role in rioting in Antwerp, and as part of that investigation several of his computers were seized. The latest information to trickle out of that investigation is that Belgian police are taking a closer look at porn on Jahjah's computer to determine whether any of it is illegal. He claims he's being set up of course, because even the possession of legal porn would rather undermine his Islamic ally pure image amongst the Arab immigrant masses. In a few weeks' time the Belgians go to the polls, where the AEL is participating in an alliance with an extreme left-wing party. The revelations certainly come at an awkward time for Jahjah.
The Islam influence in the Netherlands after the van Gogh murder.
Although there has been a trend in this direction for some years, the murder of Theo Van Gogh accelerated the rise of explicitly anti-Muslim politics, reflecting skepticism toward the ability to integrate Muslims into the society and a critique of the formerly widely accepted ideals of cultural diversity. A parliamentary report determined that “multiethnic society had been a dismal failure, huge ethnic ghettos and subcultures were tearing the country apart and the risk of polarization could only be countered by Muslims effectively becoming Dutch.”
In Holland, the meaning of traditional Dutch permissiveness was brought into question by some Muslims position on the topic of homosexuality. Many in the Dutch population began to question whether intolerant attitudes on the part of minorities should be tolerated by the broader culture.
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Media Coverage and Intellectual Discourse: An issue has arisen with Muslim attitudes towards homosexuality.
Traditionally, the Netherlands has been extremely tolerant of gays, and was the first country to legalize gay marriage. With an influx of a number of more conservative Muslims, there have been concerns that this tolerance was under threat. This provided some of the political capital of Pim Fortuyn, an openly gay anti-immigrant politician, who was assassinated during a successful campaign (although not by a Muslim).Prior to his murder, Theo Van Gogh turned a high profile lens on the issue of the treatment of women in traditional Islamic society. His film Submission told the story of a Muslim woman forced into an arranged marriage in which she is seriously abused. The film was made with the help of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a liberal Dutch-Somalian politician who escaped from an arranged marriage herself. Particularly controversial in the film were scenes of a semi-naked woman with marks from beating and verses from the Koran inscribed upon her body.
Political Discourse
In the Netherlands in 2001, anti-Muslim sentiment became apparent with the rise of Pim Fortuyn, a populist who characterized Islam as too socially conservative to integrate with traditionally liberal Dutch culture. Fortuyn was openly gay and condemned Islam for intolerance of homosexuality. Despite Fortuyn’s death at the hands of an animal rights activist, this anti-Muslim sentiment has become a powerful force in Dutch politics. A new leader, Geert Wilders seems to be taking up the same banner. These attitudes did not seem to lead to a great deal of discrimination until the murder of provocative filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in 2004. After this incident, there was a wave of violent incidents, including assaults and arson. Polling suggested a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment after the murder. In 2005, the voters of the Netherlands rejected the proposed European constitution, with more than sixty percent voting against. Much of the sentiment behind this result can be seen as a reaction against immigration. In the words of Geert Wilders, many Dutch were worried about "the country's identity slowly being eaten away."
In the kind of comment that is becoming more frequent, Fritz Bolkestein of the Netherlands, the former European Union competition commissioner quoted Lewis in a speech and claimed that “Europe is being Islamized.”
Tariq Ramadan
Who is Tariq Ramadan? The question that French intellectuals and media outlets have been asking with accumulating force in the past two years is getting serious. In December 2003, Le Monde offered part of the answer: even as a Swiss national, he is the central figure of Islam in France today. A month later, Serge Raffy in Le Nouvel Observateur posed the matter in provocative terms: is he a brilliant, young philosophy lecturer who cites the Koran and Nietzsche’s or Heidegger’s critiques of western rationalism with equal mastery, while drawing crowds of young immigrants in Paris and New York; or the undercover heir to the Muslim Brotherhood, the “Trojan horse of jihad in Europe”, an arch dissimulator whose suave exterior hides an anti–Semitic core?
It’s not just the French and European press that can’t make up their minds about Ramadan. Mohamed Sid–Ahmed in Egypt’s Al–Ahram asks why this young intellectual is granted so much importance.
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His answer is that the controversy around Ramadan – from accusations of anti–Semitism by French intellectuals to the parallel critique from within Islam that he is soft on Israel – stems from the essential duality of his Swiss–Egyptian point of origin and intellectual project: “the issue goes beyond Ramadan as an individual. It has its origins in the undeniable duality between the Islam to which Ramadan assigns himself and the western, Judeo–Christian environment in which he was brought up”.
So who is Tariq Ramadan? He is, in the first instance, the 42–year–old grandson of Hassan al–Banna, founder (in 1928) of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic revival movement that spread from Egypt throughout the Arab world, criticizing western decadence and advocating a return to Muslim values - often using violence in pursuit of this objective.
Hassan al–Banna’s moral example continues to exert enormous influence in Egypt today; the founder of Islamic Relief, Hany el–Banna (no relation) recently said “in Egypt, you don’t learn about him, you grow up with him”. Tariq’s father, Said Ramadan, was driven into exile by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954, and found refuge in Geneva. There, he founded an Islamic Centre, now headed by his combative brother, Hani Ramadan.
Tariq grew up in Geneva. He studied philosophy, writing a doctorate apiece on Islamic studies and on Nietzsche, and taught at the universities of Geneva and Fribourg. He led students on several field–trips to developing countries, meeting figures such as the Dalai Lama and Catholic exponents of “liberation theology”. After marriage, he took his family back to Egypt in a search for roots. For a decade now, he has dedicated himself to the project of inventing a coherent “European Muslim personality”. He lectures in Switzerland, France, Belgium, the United States and across the Arab and Muslim world. He tells his audience: “whatever does not oppose our values we should take up and add to our legacy”. His answer to the question: “can Muslims live as full citizens in the area once known as Christendom?” is a resounding “yes”.
Tariq Ramadan has written a dozen books, most recently Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford, 2004).
As an active member of the European Social Forum, he has attracted the attention of Le Monde Diplomatique and the leaders of the anti–globalization movement – and criticism from some of the latter’s activists. He has emerged as a pole of attraction among Europe’s growing Muslim population, and as a rival of other “stars” like the Arab European League’s Dyab Abou Jahjah. The French finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy, determined (when interior minister) to regulate the institutions of French Islam, attempted to embarrass Ramadan in televised debate on the issue of Islam’s treatment of women, (the latter became France’s President 2007).
The swirling controversies that surround him in themselves reflect the key role that Tariq Ramadan is coming to play, as an ever more significant Islamic current develops in wary regard of establishment debates about the future of Europe – and what place there might be, or not be, for Muslims within the continent.
The Arabic European League
The Arab European League's Ahmed Azzuz tells Belgian Jews to stop supporting Israel — or else. And oh, that's not a threat, he assures us: Belgium's Jews, in particular Antwerp's Jewish diamond merchants, have been put on notice by the Arab European League (AEL). "We want to warn Antwerp's Jewish community in its entirety to be on its guard.
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The community's support for Israel is no secret," Ahmed Azzuz, head of the AEL in Belgium told the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique. "The AEL calls on the Jewish community in Antwerp to cease its support of, and distance itself from, the state of Israel. If not, attacks in Antwerp are almost unpreventable," Azzuz had earlier told the Belgian Flemish magazine Knack, adding, "Every year, 200 Belgian-Israeli reservists leave for Israel to kill innocent civilians."
According to an Israel Channel 1 television report, the Jewish community is taking the threats seriously, and has already contacted elected Jewish officials, the local police and the nation's justice minister. A member of the Belgian diamond merchant’s community interviewed on the program confirmed reports that members of the Jewish community are afraid and at present, refrains from being outdoors during the nighttime hours. Peter Meeus reminded La Libre Belgique, "The quarter was already targeted in 1981, when terrorists attacked a Portuguese synagogue." The AEL's Azzuz insisted in the media that his statements were not threats. A spokeswoman for Antwerp police said rigorous security measures had already been introduced.
December 10, 2002
The AEL spreads its wings
The Arab-European League (AEL) is an organization of radical Arab immigrants of the second generation, which found its origin in Belgium. Its leader has recently been arrested and freed again there; the entire chronology can be found on Live From Brussels. Now the organization is spreading to the Netherlands, led by 32 year old M'Hamed Zaghoubi, who has lived in Amsterdam since the age of four. He dropped out of the "HBO," a vocational training course and is now unemployed. The NRC Handelsblad newspaper had an interview with him. Here are some translated highlights. He says, There's an inequality in society. Moroccan youths are being disadvantaged." Then when asked about the high crime rate amongst Moroccans:
That surprises you? Since the 80's [Moroccan] youngsters are educated to succeed their fathers on the factory floors. The Dutch educational system has failed. A difference is being made between immigrant and native youngsters. These are allowed to go to university, while most of the immigrants are sent to lower-level technical schools. Immigrants are being treated as a kind of Untermensch."
I am not a particularly big fan of the Dutch educational system (and my colleagues who have children in school are telling me it's getting worse), but it's not quite that bad. The complete refusal to accept any kind of responsibility for their own behavior and (lack of) achievements shows how thoroughly they've assimilated one part of Western culture: the vocabulary of victim-hood. The gratuitous reference to the Nazis is deeply revolting. When Zaghoubi and his family get shipped off in cargo trains to be exterminated in concentration camps, then he'd have the right to complain of being treated as an Untermensch. He continues: Dutch society is to blame for the societal problems caused by immigrant youngsters. That's why we have to increase awareness amongst Moroccan youngsters again the well-rehearsed language of victim-hood. The criminal is the victim. Society is to blame. Above all, don't accept responsibility for your actions, but try to get others to feel guilty instead.
Zaghoubi is also dismissive of the established immigrant organizations. As an example he says that when he wanted to organize an anti-American demonstration shortly September 11th (!), these organizations came out against him, because he was too radical, too militant.
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Thank heaven for that brief glimmer of sanity (or was it pragmatism?). The interview ends with the question why Moroccans in the Netherlands, who're mostly Berbers rather than Arabs, would want to join an Arab organization. He says: "Islam unites us all, all youngsters from North-Africa." Ah yes, this is sure to ease tensions. The multicultural future is now.
Belgian Muslims, Integration Through Diversity
In one of the upper-class neighborhoods of the Belgian capital, Brussels, lies the headquarters of the Muslim Executive Council, the official council for Belgian Muslims.
As the luxurious conference halls of the council indicate, Belgian Muslims are considered by the royal family and government to be an important part of the political and social life of the country. Some draw an analogy, saying that the Muslims have taken the place of one of nine spheres of the Atomium, which is situated in the northern part of Brussels.
The Atomium, or the iron lady as the Belgians call it, is a major tourist attraction in Brussels. It is has a geometrical shape consisting of nine connected "atoms." Many Belgians believe that it is representative of their multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic social fabric.
In addition to the French speaking Belgians who represent the majority of the inhabitants in Brussels and the southern regions near France, Belgium also includes of Flemish and German speakers. There are also 450,000 new residents who have come from Arab and Muslim countries and hence, with this linguistic diversity, Belgium has become a multiethnic country covering an area of no more than 30,000 square kilometers with a total population of nearly 12 million.
"This linguistic and ethnic diversity is what allowed Muslims to have an important status in this country," Kissi Benjelloun, the vice president of the Muslim Executive Council and the official spokesman for Muslims in Belgium told IslamOnline.net. "We Muslims are present in all the county's ministries, municipalities, parliaments and so we in the council do not expect that we would ever have a situation similar to what happened in France last year in terms if violent acts resulting from discrimination."
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This confidence that the representatives of the council project go back in part to the fact that Belgium was one of the first European countries to officially acknowledge Islam in a royal decree in 1974. As a result, the King of Belgium established the Islamic Center of Brussels as the first mosque in Belgium, followed by the move to include Islamic studies in the school curriculum for Muslim children in public schools.
The Belgian Experience
Despite the fact that since 1998, the Islamic Center no longer represents Muslims in the same way after the establishment of the executive official councils for Belgian Muslims, the center continues to be a symbol of the ability of the Muslim community in Belgium to integrate and coexist, especially because it's only meters away from the headquarters of the European Union.
Speaking to IslamOnline.net, the center's director, Abdel Aziz Al Yahye, said that the center has become multifaceted, playing a religious role. It also is home to Al-Ghazali Private School, the first of its kind catering to Belgian Muslims. The school is funded and supervised by the Ministry of Education. The center also includes a youth club for second and third generation Muslims as well as social services for families in need.
In comparison to many European countries, the political integration of Muslims in Belgium took huge steps during the last few years, which led many to consider the Belgian experience to be a model of political integration.
In addition to being two federal ministers, one of Moroccan origin and the other of Turkish origin, there are many representatives of the Muslim community in the local parliaments, and the Belgian political parties are increasingly including large numbers of Muslims to their electoral lists. For instance, in the last Municipal elections in 2004, the Socialist Party in Brussels included 22 Muslims out of a total of 88 candidates.
Enjoying Electoral Weight
The parties' interest in Muslims and immigrants in general is attributed to the electoral weight that Muslims enjoy as a result of acquiring Belgian nationality. According to a recent study carried out by social researcher Nureya Wally from the University of Brussels, between 1984 and 2001, 491,000 people were granted Belgian nationality. Out of those granted citizenship, there were almost 131,000 Moroccans and almost the same number of Turks, this underscored the importance of the Muslim population in the last elections.
Belgian legislations are also advanced in comparison to its European counterparts in terms of Muslim integration. It has created laws since the first wave of immigrants who came in the 1960s to give them right to work.
Nevertheless, there are many challenges that face Muslims in Belgium, such as the issue of the veil in public schools and offices. Because of the cultural proximity between Belgium and France, many people in Belgium also fear the phenomena of veiling among Muslim women. Yet, from the luxurious headquarters of the Muslims Executive in Brussels, Benjelloun belittled the problem and said that the responsibilities lies on the shoulders of the Muslim parliamentarians in Belgium to create laws that protect the freedom of religions and the wearing of the veil. "We are in a democratic country that respects religions and does not bear animosity towards them, unlike other countries," he said.
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Imitating France?
Speaking to Islamonline.net, Belgian Muslim activist Nazeeha Bin Turab blamed the Belgian elites for trying to imitate the French elite in rejecting the veil in public schools and offices. "There, Islamophobia is not new, but, on the other hand, we consider ourselves the children of this country and we have the right to work regardless of what we wear," she said.
According to a study conducted by a Belgian institute, part of which was published in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir on Feb. 20, 2006 the number of lawsuits related to job discriminations increased from 104 cases in 2000 to 150 cases in 2005. The center of equal opportunity in Belgium said that the lawsuits increased dramatically after the events of September 11.
"If we exclude the veil issue, the second and third generation Muslims have a good status and we don't think that there will be an uprising similar to what happened in France because, here in Brussels, we [Muslims] live downtown and not in the ghettos or suburbs like in Paris," adds Bin Turab on an optimistic note.
My Conclusions of above Part 1:
Part 1 relates un-related events which have taken place on both sides of the Dutch- Belgium border. These events are recorder without alterations or trying to build a framework of Islamic activism and terror. However, I need to make the following observations:
1 – We look at the behavior of people based on our Judeo-Christen Philosophy, with clear behavior pattern and a un-acceptable way of reasoning. I, however know, and see daily, as civilization’, (including questions such as value of life, human decency, loyalty to country and neighbor). What we regard as crime and non-human, the Islam considers permissible in order to reach the goal of establishment of the Islam as master religion, world-wide.
2 – Issues such as jihad (holy war on different thinking people), suicide murders, and martyr deaths and killing, family honor, the place of women in the society, burqa, etc. are unacceptable to us, but binding for the Muslim, irrelevant his social position and education.
3 - Agreements between Muslims and non believers have no value, and can be broken in order to serve the Islam cause.
Having said all this, I repeat the question, are the events related before, somehow connected and do they have not only a pattern but also a purpose, and if yes, what is their goal? Part 2 is partly fiction, in which I tried to create plot and environment, based on a parallel to what happened in my home country "Israel", during the latest Lebanese crisis, fighting the Hezbollah.
I hope that Jahjah, who left the scene of Europe in order to fight my country in the Lebanon, succeeded in dying his heroic death, but fails to get his 74 or more Virgins, due to short supply, with so many Hezbollah martyrs dying in the Lebanese struggle. Or even better, I hope that the Quran made a typing mistake, and instead of 74 or more virgins, he gets a virgin 74 years old.
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I tried to keep away from current El Qaeda plots, worldwide, such as the London, airplanes plot, what happens in Iraq and in Iran, or trying to suggest who is running all this, or try to find out, why? My only purpose is to explain how we (the Western world) innocently walk in a trap, which piece by piece build up to the Islam Radical World Empire.
On the other hand, in the neighboring country, the Netherlands, the general public rejected quit effectively (as it seems) the Radical Islam influence, and the permissiveness of the Dutch society, is for the radical Muslim, like a red flag to the bull.
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The Ravenstein documents
Dr. Alfred Postuma, a researcher working at the Gent University, specializing in studying of ancient documents, received from the Brussels National Museum a bundle of documents which seem to have been the property of the Queen Mother Elisabeth Gabriele Val̩rie Marie, Duchess in Bavaria, Princess of Bavaria (July 25, 1876 РNovember 23, 1965), queen consort of Albert I of Belgium and mother of Leopold III of Belgium. A daughter of Karl-Theodor, Duke in Bavaria, and his wife, the Infanta Maria Josepha of Portugal, she was born at Possenhofen, Bavaria, Germany on July 25, 1876. She was a niece and namesake of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The bundle of documents, on her death in 1965, were donated to the Museum, but never seriously researched.
Dr. Alfred Postuma finally made time to research the old bundle of official documents, of which most of them dealt with property deeds, and hunting permits belonging to estates owned by the queen's family in Germany. Between those papers, he found the deed of a heirloom dealing with the “Ravenstein Beauties”, which was a kind of independent state (estate or Barony) in the now Dutch province of North Brabant, owned by the Dukes of Bavaria (Kleef)..
Dr. Postuma tried to find out, why this property, obvious owned by the late Queen's Catholic family, had been integrated into the Protestant Netherlands, and not, like other Spanish Beauties, returned to the lawful owner, the Catholic Kingdom Belgium. Finding no evidence of sale or any transfer of the property, he decided to publish his findings. His purpose was of course, not to try to change the status of the property, but to show, how, in actual fact, the new division of Europe, did not take account the ownership of estates, and create borders between countries, irrelevant who owned it and who lived there.
Surprisingly, his publication created quit a stir in the academic world, special by the Flemish speaking part of Belgium, which finally found a subject to blame their Dutch neighbors of land-theft. Quickly, this issue became an issue for the political Vlaams Belang Party a very extreme Flemish right wing political party, championing all causes that might embarrass the Government. Their news papers shouted in their headlines, "High value Real Estate belonging to the Belgian people, was stolen by the Dutch Imperialists, known for not only for betrayal of their Flemish brothers in the hundred year fight with the Walloons but also for their cunning taking advantage of the still fragile Belgian nation".
More peculiar was a support for this confrontation, by their usual arch-enemies, the United Arab Islam Party (the Political branch of several Islamic parties which united under a common national Belgium political body, representing more than 3/4 million Islamic citizens and other immigrant groups.
The UAIP was worried about the strong anti Islamic feelings in Holland, with a growing anti-immigrant legislation, proposed by a new rightist fraction of the newly elected Dutch second Chamber (Dutch Parliament).
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Those anti-immigrant legislations were also introduced by the Dutch representatives in the European Government, and got surprisingly huge backing from other member countries' delegates, for example: Italian, French, Austrian, German and Belgium.
The UAIP causes were poorly represented at the European Government, and by trying to promote friction between the European members, they thought to reduce the danger of anti immigrant (anti Islam) laws and rules of the assembly. It became clear very fast, that even though, Holland and Belgium were at peace for over 170 years, there was still a lot of animosity and hatred left between the two peoples.
The UAIP had succeeded to gain many seats in the Municipal elections, in Flemish cities such as Antwerp, Turnhout, Genk, Hasselt, Maaseik, Gent and Brugge.
After numerous skirmishes between Flemish youth and Muslim Women dressed with scarves (burqas) and long black dresses, the local Muslim groups formed armed militias, to defend their women being attacked by hoodlums claiming that the local police failed to protect their women. The Flemish Government was incapable passing a law against those militia, because strong opposition from UAIP representatives. Weapons of various magnitude were smuggled through the German and French borders to those militia groups, including anti tank guns, automatic rifles and rockets. The police tried unsuccessfully to stop the armament of the militias, but did not receive the necessary backing of the central government.
International Terrorist Support Groups Thrive in Belgium and Netherlands
Adriana Stuijt
Monday, Sept. 24, 2001
ROTTERDAM – Top international anti-terrorism experts have identified two of Europe's most legally tolerant regions – namely, the Dutch-language areas around Europe's most important west coast harbors, Antwerp and Rotterdam – as the main breeding ground for Muslim fundamentalist terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden’s organization even runs shipping companies as fronts from Amsterdam.
The British researcher Dr. R. Gunaratna warned that, especially in The Netherlands, because of its total lack of anti-terrorism laws and its very high level of religious, cultural and judicial tolerance, Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist groups are allowed to thrive. They use Amsterdam and Rotterdam as central bases in the West from which they garnish funds, recruit activists from the local Muslim youth cultural groups, and purchase highly sophisticated arms in the world's largest trading hub: Rotterdam harbor.
The Kurdish PKK, the Tamil Tigers and the Philippines' New People's Army all use the liberal Dutch territory, from which they garnish new converts, turn them into activist supporters, launder and raise funds and purchase sophisticated equipment. These Dutch-based groups, especially, also create waves of propaganda material – and, being based in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp, also have no difficulty in purchasing any weapons and other high-tech support materials with which to mount terrorist attacks abroad.
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Another new, disturbing pattern pointing to a new form of terrorism against the civilian population at large has been detected in both harbor towns of Antwerp and Rotterdam:
"Muslim cultural organizations" have also turned the streets of Antwerp and Rotterdam into main battlegrounds for Muslim fundamentalist male criminal youth gangs who deliberately attack, rob and invade ethno-European cultural events and throngs of shoppers in the large shopping districts.
These well-organized attacks are leaving the local Dutch-speaking ethno-Europeans totally vulnerable and defenseless because their governments have no anti-terrorist laws with which to stop such highly aggressive youth groups from forming in the first place.
For instance, about 5.1 percent of Rotterdam's population is of Moroccan origin – yet about 10 percent of all the city's arrested criminal suspects are of Moroccan origin, according to Rotterdam's latest police statistics issued by chief inspector J. Verbeek and Erasmus University.
In the Dutch-speaking region's latest criminal youth gang attack in Belgium, in the suburb of Hasselt in Antwerp on Sept. 24, large groups of Algerian-Moroccan youths, centrally organized by cell phones and armed with batons and insecticide spray, attacked hundreds of local Flemish citizens holding their traditional end-of-summer fair and circus event at Kruger market square.
Many eyewitnesses who described the terror and destruction at the usually jolly and peaceful Flemish circus fair said the Algerian and Moroccan youths targeted especially women and girls as the youth gangs tore into the carnival goers, spraying people's eyes with insecticides and deodorants; spitting at and insulting especially the Flemish; ordering the girls and women to wear headscarves and calling them whores; cursing the men as "Flemish pork-eaters"; spitting on and befouling with urine and soil the carnival's traditional pancake dinners and destroying the antique, highly valuable carousel and circus equipment hired for the Hasselt community carnival.
Flemish old-age pensioners and children alike were forced to flee in fear of being blinded by spray, and were beaten up and kicked. The Flemish carnival goers – all local residents – had to flee from a steady stream of loud, rude verbal abuse from the young Algerians and Moroccans invading their neighborhood. Many witnesses also said the youths chanted popular slogans used by the Muslim-terrorist organization GIA. Some of these events were described in a local Antwerp newspaper.
Carnival goers who tried to remain and finish their traditional pancake meals or who tried to protect the antique circus equipment were physically attacked by kick-boxing youths. The equipment and musical instruments were destroyed during the racist rampage. There were very few police in attendance. The mainstream Belgian news media briefly described the event as a "scuffle" at a local carnival without mentioning the racist overtones.
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In Rotterdam, only about 60 miles north of Antwerp, a similar pattern has also been developing over the past year, with widespread reports of assaults by Moroccan-Algerian youth gangs – described by Dutch police as "criminal youth gangs of North African descent"– but who are described by the news media as being highly centrally organized through cell phones.
These gangs target major shopping districts and traditional European cultural and sporting events to rob, terrorize and abuse especially the ethno-Dutch population. During these organized attacks, the youths are also seen to deliberately target ethno-European girls and women, demanding that they start obeying the strict Muslim shari'a laws favored by terrorist regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, which require total subservience to males. Many women shoppers now shun these major shopping districts to avoid such confrontations.
A Sociological Explanation
Dutch sociologists do not link these aggressive criminal North African male youth gangs to any Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist organizations – instead claiming that this first generation of Algerian-Moroccan youths, primarily rose without fathers, were "de-culturized" and therefore aimlessly floating into such destructive criminal behavior.
The sociologists, in fact, urged even more government subsidies to these "cultural" groups to try and combat such behavior. By tradition and unlike Christian women, these sociologists point out, Muslim women are never allowed to discipline any of their male children and the cultural groups might be able to better "channel their male energies."
However, there's a much more organized situation going on here than these Dutch sociologists would have us believe. For example, on the night after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, large groups of North African youths congregated in the town squares in Antwerp and also in the town of Ede in The Netherlands. In this town, a huge crowd of Muslim male youths had started to congregate shortly after the attacks and started celebrating what they themselves told the horrified local citizens was their personal "victory against America."
This was too much even for the highly liberal Dutch – Ede citizens called in the local police and demanded the youths' removal. However, the local police station commander lamely excused his lack of inaction by saying that the youths had been "expressing their rights to free speech available to all Dutch citizens" and that he was not allowed to stop the distasteful celebration.
And in a shock survey carried out by Muslim cultural publications the day after the attack, a full 80 percent of the thousands of Dutch Muslims questioned said that they had been in favor of the terrorist attacks.
Besides these clear danger signals from the Muslim community in The Netherlands itself, the Dutch government this week was also warned by the British anti-terrorism expert Gunaratna, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Science at St. Andrews University in Scotland, to "stop disregarding the international fight against terrorism, and start prohibiting these terrorist support groups by law."
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He urged the Dutch government to immediately change its laws and immediately prohibit these support groups. "Your country must change its laws at once if it wants to remain free of terrorism," he said.
Dutch Law and Terrorism
The Netherlands does not have any anti-terrorism laws – and thus openly allowed fundraising and arms purchase exporting by, for instance, terrorist support groups during the anti-apartheid movement's support of the terrorist cells of the African Nationalist Congress (ANC) and the Pan-African's Congress (PAC) before 1994.
Many Dutch citizens – such as the head of the now-defunct "Anti-apartheid movement Netherlands," the journalist Connie Braam – even actively participated in smuggling weapons and bombs into South Africa from Dutch territory and without any intervention from the Dutch government, which even provided government funding for this terrorist support group. Dutch law itself contributes to the thriving terrorist support-group culture in The Netherlands. It does not allow any actions to be undertaken against support groups of terrorist organizations if it cannot be firmly proven that their fundraising and other physical support led to the terror attacks.
However, the internal security service of The Netherlands (BVD) itself is also not concentrating on probing such Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist activities as much as they are infiltrating right-wing or neo-Nazi groups, as the Dutch government has traditionally viewed such fascism as the prime enemy of peace and prosperity since the Nazi occupation during WWII. As long as the Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist support groups do not misbehave inside The Netherlands, they can therefore continue to use the Dutch territory
from which to garnish economic and material support – including purchasing highly
sophisticated weaponry from the local arms industry – even if these directly
lead to terrorist attacks outside The Netherlands, as also happened during the terrorist campaign conducted by the ANC and the PAC against the apartheid government in South Africa prior to 1994.
Belgium does have some anti-terrorist legislation also primarily targeting right-wing neo-Nazi groups – but is juristically more lenient toward Muslim-fundamentalist terrorist support groups on Belgian soil. Other European countries do have better anti-terrorist legislation, with Great Britain having the most stringent laws due to its Northern Ireland troubles.
Terrorist Support Groups
Gunaratna said many of these groups have been active in The Netherlands for many years. "They conduct fundraisers and launder funds in The Netherlands to carry out violent attacks in Asia and the Middle East," he said. He also noticed such support groups among other Muslim communities not known for terrorist activities, such as the Sikhs, Sri Lankans, and Pakistani and Kurd cultural groups – many of which are even subsidized by the Dutch government.
American expert Yossef Bodansky, author of a book on bin Laden, also confirmed that Amsterdam-based shipping companies operate as front organizations for the Al Qaida organization.
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This was also confirmed by the French-Arabian newspaper Al Watan Al Arabi. Dutch internal affairs minister De Vries shrugged a dismayed "So what can I do about it?" reaction when confronted with these warnings from international experts – telling the TV program "Buitenhof" that he actually "could not exclude that subversive activities might be taking place inside such Muslim cultural groups."
And he even warned a few days later after talks with the 25 mayors of the main Dutch cities in charge of the regional police corps that "the Dutch cannot now start waging a cold war against Muslim religious groups." He also warned Amsterdam's chief justice officer L. de Wit – who had told the news media that he would call in the defense force in case of pro-bin Laden riots in the capital city – that it was "very foolish to speculate in public about possible riots." He also considered it unnecessary to rush to protect and beef up the security for all the public buildings and public figures against terrorist attacks. "There is no concrete terrorist threat in The Netherlands," he concluded and advised that only "some public buildings" had had their security stepped up. Al Watan
Meanwhile, Rotterdam's mayor, Mr. I. Opstelten, said the four men arrested in his city last week as suspects connected to the terrorist attacks on America still have not provided any leads that could link them. One is in a routine holding facility for illegal aliens and the other three are in police custody pending the investigation, he said. The Dutch internal security organization, the BVD, has managed to confiscate a "suspicious parcel" destined for the United States, which was posted in the Swartjan street post office in Rotterdam. The country's anti-terrorist expert P. van der Molen said the main suspect of this Muslim support group, a Tunisian citizen, is still in custody in Brussels, Belgium.
Some anti-Muslim reactions were also recorded in The Netherlands since the Sept. 11 infamy. About 25 incidents were recorded by Dutch police, including arson, graffiti, and threats against mosques and Islamic schools in the towns of Vlissingen, Uden, Zwolle, Heerlen, The Hague and Rijssen. Two Islamic schools were torched, one in Nijmegen and the other in Drachten. The Dutch cabinet minister in charge of "integration management," Mr. Van Boxtel, said this "unacceptable behavior against our young new Dutch citizens, this miniterrorism, will be punished with the full force of Dutch law."
MADRID, Spain (CNN) –
Police in Spain on Thursday arrested the suspected leader of two alleged Islamic terrorist cells broken up earlier this week in Spain, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The suspect, Omar Nakhcha, a 23-year-old Moroccan, led the two cells, which recruited socalled "holy warriors" to fight in the Iraqi insurgency, the statement said. Twenty suspects from those cells were arrested on Tuesday in Spain, it said. Nakhcha's cells also had helped three key suspects in the Madrid train bombings of 2004 to escape Spain shortly after those attacks, the statement said. Police detained Nakhcha Thursday while he was walking on a street in the town of Santa Coloma de Gramanet, near Barcelona. One of the cells disrupted Tuesday was based nearby in the town of Vilanova y la Geltru, also near Barcelona. Police had detected Nakhcha's presence in Spain recently, and the arrest should help investigators fill in the gaps on other anti-terrorist operations, in which Nakhcha allegedly played "an important role," the statement said. The 20 suspects arrested Tuesday, who are still awaiting arraignment, formed two cells, one based in Vilanova y la Geltru that recruited and sent would-be suicide bombers to Iraq, and another based in Madrid that sent so-called "holy warriors" to fight in the insurgency in Iraq, Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said Tuesday.
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The cell near Barcelona allegedly was in charge of recruiting and sending an Algerian man to carry out a suicide bombing at Nasiriya, Iraq on Nov. 12, 2003. That attack killed 19 Italians -including 12 military police, five troops and two civilians -- and nine Iraqis, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. In addition to those activities, Nakhcha's group also helped two Madrid train bombing suspects escape Spain after those March 11, 2004 attacks that killed 191 people:
Mohamed Afalah, a Moroccan who is presumed dead after apparently carrying out a suicide attack in Iraq in May 2005; and Mohamed Belhadj, a Moroccan who is still a fugitive, the statement said. The statement added that Nakhcha's group "probably" also helped another train bombing suspect to escape at the same time: Daoud Ouhnane, an Algerian. Spanish media reports say Ouhnane's fingerprints allegedly were found in train bombing evidence recovered. Nakhcha was identified as a cell leader by another terrorist suspect arrested in Spain last June, Larbi Ben Sellam, who told investigators that Nakhcha had worked from Belgium to organize escapes for the train bombing suspects, the statement said.
Police arrested two other people with Nakhcha on Thursday, but authorities had not completed identification of them and it's possible they are not suspects and just happened to be with Nakhcha at the time of his arrest, an Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN. Police also searched four locales on Thursday after arresting Nakhcha, the statement said.
Nakhcha is linked to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which authorities say had a key role in the Madrid train bombings. Nakhcha also had oversight of would-be suicide bombers or fighters to be sent from Spain to join the insurgency in Iraq, as well as the those who left Iraq to return to Europe to join terrorist cells in various nations, the statement said.The 20 suspects arrested Tuesday included 16 Moroccans, three Spaniards, a Turk and an Algerian, said Alonso, the Interior Minister. The Algerian is the suspected leader of the Madrid cell and he earlier received terrorist training in Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday. "They were in an organization dedicated to international terrorism and linked to al Qaeda," Alonso said Tuesday.
Investigators think a Moroccan man possibly recruited by one of the Spanish cells fought in Iraq for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of al Qaeda in Iraq. The Moroccan was subsequently detained in Syria and sent back to Morocco, Alonso said. He said some of the suspects also allegedly provided financing, forged documents and other logistical support to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and also to the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The Spanish cells also had links to terrorists in France, Belgium, Holland, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, Alonso said. Police arrested 16 of the suspects near Barcelona in the town of Vilanova y la Geltru, Alonso said, the location of one of the suspected terrorist cells.
The other suspected cell was based in Madrid, where police made three arrests. The final suspect was detained in the town of Lasarte, in Spain's northern Basque region. The Madrid cell, Alonso said, not only recruited so-called "holy warriors" to be sent to Iraq, but also facilitated the transit of suspected terrorists from North Africa through Spain to Iraq, and back. Police searched 30 homes and locales after the arrests. They found no immediate evidence that the suspects were planning an "imminent attack" in Spain, Alonso said. But Alonso added that investigators "can't rule out that they could have carried out attacks in Europe or in Spain," because the cells disrupted Tuesday had a "higher level" of preparation than other suspected terrorist cells disrupted in Spain in recent months.
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Last month, police arrested 18 suspected Islamic terrorists -- also on suspicion of recruiting "holy warriors" to fight against Western forces in Iraq. A judge later filed preliminary charges against all of them but ordered only six of the 18 to remain in jail. Over the last three decades, the West has been flooded by misleading books on Islam. Concealing the complexities inherent to an accurate portrayal of Muslim theology and the history of Islamic civilization, some Muslim groups have aggressively marketed a simplistic, roseate image of Islam to universities and other intellectual domains, as well as to the mass media.
Muslims specifically trained to teach non-Muslims were sent to Western universities. Since the 1970s, the Euro-Arab Dialogue apparatus — a complex Euro-Arab propaganda lobby that involved the highest political levels of the two sides — has encouraged this policy, conducted by local and immigrant professors. It is also thanks to this complex structure, based on oil, market interests, and arms sales, that many millions of Muslim immigrants were encouraged to settle in Europe over the last 30 years. This is one of the main causes that prevented Europe, until recently, from denouncing and fighting Islamic terror. The immigration policy also neutralized Europe's defenses and contributed to its drifting away from America.
Weakened by two world wars and obsessed with its immediate economic interests, the European Union has deliberately adopted an ostrich-like policy since the 1970s. Rather than confronting the real dangers of radical Islam, the EU chose to deny them and implicitly endorsed the Arab war against Israel. Over decades, this policy has boomeranged and further weakened Europe, rekindling a widespread anti-Semitism which is in turn exacerbated by Arab immigrant fanaticism.
Since September 11, 2001, many ideas have been presented to the American public concerning Islam and it is perfectly true that one cannot encompass a billion people in a single judgment. If one should not pre-judge people and individuals, one can nevertheless form an opinion on Islam according to its religious scriptures, its jurisdiction, its political institutions, its long history, and its doctrinal injunctions concerning Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims. One should not label people by generalizing, but one can — and must — examine and ponder over the Islamic historical and political legacy, especially in the domain that relates to non-Muslims.
Belgian Halifat
Arab immigrants create parallel power structures
Elmar Gusseinov,RIA “Novosti”, Paris
A new state might soon come into being in Europe – an Arab one. It would take up over the territory currently occupied by the Kingdom of Belgium. Its official language would be the Arabic, and its official
religion the Islam. Whatever the future is, the streets of the biggest Belgian city, Antwerp, are by now patrolled by so called “public militia” of young Moroccans clad in black.
It looks like the most nightmarish fears of average Europeans come true in Belgium. Led by a Mr. Abu Jihad, the local Arab League of Europe demands that the Arabs be officially recognized as a separate “ethnos equal to any other”.
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This radical organization would also like to see the Arabic becoming an official language in Belgium, the Islam its official religion, and quotes for Muslims to be imposed at schools and universities, as well as at the state services. But first and foremost, they demand the country’s authorities put to an end the policy of integration of Muslim immigrants into Belgian life. It is the League’s activists who patrol Muslim populated neighborhoods of Antwerp together with the police watching the “propriety” of the latter’s actions.
One cannot escape an impression that the mindless attempts of the Left to change cultural and ethnic landscape of Europe are about to bring upon Belgium a real disaster. Antwerp is the world fourth biggest port, the most affluent Belgian city. Here is the world and European centre of diamond trade. Here are located all the major fortunes of the Kingdom. On the other hand, the highest rate of unemployment – 15%, whence the average for Belgium is about 6% – is also reached by Antwerp. The biggest, the most impoverished, and the most arrogant Arab community in Belgium does live in Antwerp, too.
Local authority of Antwerp is in the hands of Socialists, and to a great extend this fact explains the approaching disaster. With manic doggedness, Socialists for decades pandered to the Arab migration from North Africa (mainly from Morocco) to the city. There were no jobs in Antwerp for unskilled, not too industrious Moroccans, and so they became dependants of welfare programs. Gradually they accumulated irritation and anger against the country that with no clear purpose had accepted them.
The climax burst out last autumn when a Flemish guy beat (the crap out of) his neighbor, who happened to be a Moroccan teacher. The Arab community of Antwerp found the occasion, a plain domestic violence, good enough casus belli for widespread demonstrations, which evolved to pogroms. The latter were firmly quelled by the police and the leader of the Arab League of Europe was arrested for the first time. His close ties to the terrorist group Hezbollah were well known, but didn’t stop the police promptly to let him go. The very first action of Abu Jihad upon getting out of jail was to organize a private Muslim militia in Antwerp.
The militiamen closely follow the steps of the regular policemen in the immigrants’ quarters, carrying placards saying “Bad cops, the Arab League of Europe keeps an eye on you!’ They also use video cameras to film every step of the policemen. Official web-sites of the League are full of anti-Semitic slogans. There already were attempts to set alight the city synagogue. Antwerp’s Jewish community is about 20 thousand strong. It consists predominantly of Orthodox Hassids involved in diamond trade, and as such is one of the richest in Europe. The local Jews are apprehensive about their safety and thus an alliance between them and far Right nationalists came into being, which is quite unusual for the nowadays Europe.
The radical Right party under the leadership of Philip de Winter has formally committed itself to the protection of the Jewish community. Arab extremists’ orgy has resulted in a swing in Antwerp voters’ preferences and now about 40% of them are ready to support the nationalists in the future election. The Right demands that those descendants of Arab immigrants who blatantly disrespect the country’s law and culture be stripped of Belgian citizenship.
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| Oman (on the Persian Gulf) |
Oman, a country with a tiny population but the second-largest state in the Arabian Gulf, is in the throes of transforming its oil-dependent economy into one which is more diverse. Leisure tourism, while still in its infancy, is one of the sectors that is being targeted for future development. The sultanate has modem hotels and a myriad of attractions -- from four wheel drive safaris in the desert to health spas -- but for the past three decades, it has attracted mostly business travelers, something which the government wants to change.
The main international gateways are Muscat, the capital and Salalah in the south. In accordance with its plans for the future of the country, both airports have been privatized -the first such move in the Gulf region - along with several hotels and other businesses involved in travel and tourism. Through soft loans, incentives and the lifting of visa and trade restrictions, the Omani government is luring outside companies and consortia with interests in leisure travel, to invest in the sultanate.
Older, well-heeled tourists from Europe, Great Britain and North America, in particular ecotourists and travelers interested in cultural tourism are a prime market for Oman. Such travelers have the time and the money to travel to a long-haul destination but seasonality -Oman is very hot in summer -- curbs a year-round leisure market, creating low hotel occupancy rates during certain times of the year. Despite the low vacancy rates which currently dog the hotel sector, the construction of new resorts and hotels are well under way, in anticipation of the growth that the government expects during the next decade.
In 1996, according to WTO statistics, Oman welcomed 349,000 visitors. By 2000, that figure had risen to well over half a million. Given the current healthy rate of growth, the WTO predicts that this emerging destination could welcome over 1.8 million visitors by 2010.
The Sultanate of Oman is home to only 2.4 million people but it is the second largest state in the Arabian Gulf after Saudi Arabia, its giant neighbor to the west. Oman (as it is more commonly referred to) sprawls over 212,500 square kilometers. Its southern border is flanked by Yemen. To the north lie the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and beyond, the other three Gulf kingdoms, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. While much of Oman is arid desert, the countryside - a blend of mountains, wadis (river beds), palm groves and sand dunes fringed by a pristine coastline - is ruggedly beautiful.
The sultanate occupies a strategic position overlooking the Straits of Hormuz, the transit point for transporting the world's biggest single source of crude oil. (According to a recent issue of The Economist, an estimated 16 million barrels a day pass through this waterway.) Oman's eastern shore is flanked by the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The country's 1,056-mile coastline is a spectacular mix of indented fjords, lagoons laced with mangrove trees, rocky coves and long, sandy beaches which are, as yet, unsullied by mass construction.
Not surprisingly, given the country's geography, the Omanis have always been a seafaring people. Traditional dhows, wooden vessels with graceful, curved hulls and high prows, still carry trade goods back and forth across the ocean. In days gone by, they transported copper and frankincense around the ancient world. By the time the Portuguese merchants arrived in the early 1500s, Omanis held sway over a vast trading area which extended from Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), to India. The Portuguese occupied Oman for well over a century and although they were eventually ousted in 1650, the Sultanate remained an important trading centre until the early 1800s.
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From the mid-19th century until the 1960s, Oman became something of a backwater, whose people were isolated and where customs, such as a 9pm curfew, were strictly enforced. Said bin Taimur ruled Oman from 1932 to 1970, during which time Oman had only six miles of paved roads and the remote interior of the country was torn with tribal strife. In 1970, the present Sultan, Qaboos bin Said, then only 30 years old, deposed his father in a peaceful palace coup and set about transforming his once feudal nation.
Sultan Qaboos is a graduate of Sandhurst and during the past three decades, the ruler and his government have launched a series of ambitious five-year plans to develop and modernize the country. Using revenues earned from the export of oil and natural gas and with the help of an army of migrant workers, the country's economy and the standard of living of its people, have been transformed. Omanis have literally gone from camels to computers in less than a generation - an astonishing achievement by anybody's standards, but one which has not been devoid of problems. For some Omanis the rate of change has been too fast, for others, it has not been fast enough.
Like his father, Sultan Qaboos is an absolute ruler, albeit a relatively benevolent and enlightened one. He has his detractors. Nonetheless, he and his advisers have achieved an incredible amount in a relatively short space of time. According to a report published in March 2002 by The Economist, over the past three decades, electricity output in Oman has risen by 670 times, the number of telephones 420 times and the number of doctors 260 times - a very different scenario from the Oman of the 1970s.
Today, Oman's primary source of wealth is its natural resources. The country's main export earners are petroleum and natural gas, but the sultanate also produces asbestos, copper, gypsum, limestone and chromium. Oman's industrial output accounts for 40% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), but the service sector, which includes tourism, accounts for a greater proportion - around 57% of GDP. The remaining 3% of GDP is generated by agriculture.
Tourism is, as yet, a blip on the economic map. The travel industry is still in its infancy, but the Omani government is targeting it as a promising source of revenue for the future--not least because revenues from oil are expected to remain fairly flat for some time to come. Oil reserves, in any case, are not expected to last beyond the next couple of decades.
Unlike most other sultanates in the region whose oil supplies are expected to last for another century or longer, Oman's time as an oil-producing nation--barring another major find--is running out. The sultanate will, in short, need to diversify its economy to secure its future--something which is already under way. Developing the tourism industry (as neighboring Dubai has already done with some degree of success) is one of the government's primary goals.
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In 2000, (the most recent figure available) 571,000 international travelers visited Oman, generating $120 million in tourism revenues--almost double the revenues earned a decade earlier ($56 million in 1989).
Salalah, in the extreme south of the country, 640 miles from Oman, turns green in the summer, thanks to an annual monsoon. It is one of the few places that tourists from more northern climes enjoy visiting in June, July and August when the rest of the country is searingly hot. The beaches of Salalah offer all manner of water sports -- scuba diving, canoeing, jet skiing, diving and the like. Wetlands shelter all manner of migrating birds.
Oman is becoming a stopover point for some cruise ships. The first marina to be built in the sultanate -- Bandar al-Rawdha -- opened in 1996, in Sidab.
Several resorts designed to appeal to leisure travellers and families, are being planned or are already under construction. At Mirbat, near Salalah, the Dhofar Tourism Company is building a $150 million tourist "village" which will include two hotels, a diving centre and a park. UNESCO recently awarded heritage site status to five destinations in Dhofar which were part of the ancient frankincense route.
One of the most ambitious projects is the Barr Al Jissah Resort which will be built some five miles south of Muscat. This 700-room resort, which is being developed by Zubair Enterprises and which will be operated by the Asian luxury group, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, will be a self-contained complex of three hotels, with a health spa, a souq, nightclubs and specialty restaurants. Construction is expected to begin in November 2002 and is scheduled for completion by the summer of 2005.
Nobody found it peculiar when 2 businessmen from Saudi Arabia contacted a water sport supply center in Antwerp, with an order for 50 enlarged high speed water scooters, to be used in the vicinity of Bandar al Rawdha marina, for extended day tours of the country's 1,056-mile coastline spectacular mix of indented fjords, lagoons laced with mangrove trees, rocky coves and long, sandy beaches which are, as yet, unsullied by mass construction.
Generally, those water scooters have only a small capacity for luggage and fuel, but the scooters ordered, were specially re-designed to enable non-stop use for 6 – 8 hours, without refill of the tanks. The scooters were to be delivered at a specific warehouse in the Antwerp harbor, in three months time. Of course, nobody bothered to check the business connection between the 2 businessmen and the Bandar al Rawdha marina, after the payment was cleared by the bank.
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The Port of Rotterdam
Botlek (Rotterdam), February 2003 - Is this timing or what! On the same day the paper Newsy/Respected ‘n Crucial has the scoop of the cabinet's wish to deploy the army and Military Police to the nation's 'strategic places’, two reporters of this very daily collaborate on an expo to one of the main sites to be guarded: the Rotterdam harbor.
The cabinet's plans become public the moment the US Department of Homeland Security conveys the sci fi-inspired message 'Homeland Security Threat Level Raised to Orange'.
Speak of a dare! Stirred by these tidings, that very evening three civilian cars set out and head for the first target: the lunar factory aka the mystery factory or the sci factory. For security reasons (international tension and all), the exact location will not be revealed here.
Parked in a way that would make a Navy SEAL scratch behind his head, a dozen people get out of the cars. A same number of zoom lenses appear.
A low concrete wall makes the covert access easy. Entering it for the third time since last November, it’s getting a routine, though tonight the area breathes a completely different atmosphere. For one, the Nationaal Crisis Centrum (NCC) wasn't so much on top of things, back then.
Or maybe it's the orange lights. They're pointed at the factory as if it were a base on the red planet. Where are the operators? Ten shades disappear in the mist, looking for clues.
I’m looking for the ladder to the highest chimney, but it’s removed since the visit of the Rotterdam and Latvian branch. Maybe the demolishers found our traces or maybe the stripping is just part of the procedure. Next to a huge beltway, an open door leads to a pathway that leads to a ladder going up to a hatch. It’s quite heavy, but unlocked. Upstairs, a pitch dark floor is filled with pipes of different shapes and sizes. The path surrounds them. After turning three corners the light of fluorescent lamps spills into the hallway. Four operational fire extinguishers hang next to the entry where it comes from. It’s the nervous system of the complex. I’m not the first to enter; others are looking for clues that may lead to crew BL.03, flipping through folders and papers. A cabinet is filled with day reports and manuals. We find out that the factory produced briquettes. Aha! BBQ supplies is the first thing that comes to mind and... Err. Well, maybe it was used to fuel not so advanced space towing vehicles.
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After a careful scan of an irrelevant day report (porter nostalgia!), we move on.
Two cars move to an undisclosed target, the third heads for a most exciting component of the Betuwelijn. Under a bridge we make it to the edge of the railway and head towards the tunnel entrance. On the right side runs a highway lane, on which cars make us duck out of sight every half minute. As the last few feet remain between us and the entry, a rumble swells from behind us. It turns out to come from a yellow locomotive on a track separate of the tunnel entrance. As it comes closer, the ground starts to tremble and at a slow pace it roars by. In a flash I see the driver stopping the loc, transmitting an emergency call to the NCC and loading a flare gun. But the loc keeps its speed and the window stays closed. Seconds later the loc rides parallel to the tunnel track, out of sight.
Everyone breathes out and we continue the walk, right into the rectangular shaped beak of the Botlektunnel. It’s about twelve meters high and seven meters wide. After hundred meters or so it changes into a hollow cylinder. The ceiling is twenty meters under water. This is a pristine and sterile tunnel, reminding of the Antwerp subway.
With an inexperienced eye, I'd say the track hasn't been used much yet. According to the original plan, the tunnel should've been operational in 2002. Another few hundred meters further down, a doorway leads to a staircase. Three stories higher we’re standing on ground level. A big chamber is clamped by highway lanes. Back on tunnel level, we walk a bit further. The tunnel supposedly is about three kilometers long, but alas, a majority of the group prefers turning around over an exit from the other side.
As we exit the tunnel, no representatives of Natres, NCC or the Marechaussee are awaiting us. Very well then, the zoom lenses can be put at rest; planet Botlek has nothing to fear of the fly-by-nights.
In the Rotterdam harbor an oil tanker explodes. Is it Muslim terrorism?
14 May 2005
In the Rotterdam harbor an oil tanker explodes. In this post-9/11 era, everybody immediately assumes it's a terrorist's attack. The next morning a young Moroccan and his blond girlfriend are lifted from their bed by the police. The girlfriend gets out of custody soon, thanks to her lawyer-dad, and the long search for her friend and for the truth starts.
The movie fits in the current wave of movies about the tensions in the Dutch multi-cultural society. It's a good one in its genre, I think. Good acting, good pace, nice plot (though a bit predictable). In any other genre it would be classified as crafty (at best), but the political and social subject matter makes it interesting. The movie was shot before the murder of Theo van Gogh, which is remarkable because after the murder the general public became aware of terrorist cells, with young Moroccans participating, focusing on Dutch soil. Theo van Gogh, BTW, who earlier that year made a very good movie ("Cool") in the same genre. Author: Arnold Koopman
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Nuclear Thefts in Iraq
Sqn Ldr Ajey Lele, Defense Analyst
Post American invasion, Iraq has emerged as the most likely and the cheapest source of radioactive material in the world. As per the latest UN report, few Iraqi nuclear facilities are likely to be guarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog IAEA has also found ?nuclear strained? Equipment turning up in European scrap yards. The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA inspectors into Iraq and has undertaken the responsibility for illegal weapons searches. Hence, the latest IAEA inference is based on the satellite imagery which shows extensive removal of equipment and in some instances, removal of entire buildings themselves. There is a possibility that a terrorist organization may be in a position to produce and use a ?dirty bomb? with the help of such material. There also exists a danger that the local Iraqi population may get exposed to radioactive materials.
Dr. El Baradei is worried because large quantities of scrap material, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq from the sites previously monitored by the IAEA. In the beginning of this year, the UN officials confirmed that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material found in a shipment of scrap metal in Rotterdam Harbor. According to them, the material, a natural uranium ore, might have come from a mine in Iraq that was active before the Gulf War I. The consignment was received form Jordan. Also a small number of Iraqi missile engines were found at the European ports.
This radioactive material known as yellowcake or uranium oxide could be used to build a nuclear weapon. However, a very large quantity of such substance along with a complicated technology would be required to produce enough uranium for a single bomb. But this small amount is sufficient for the production of a ?radiological (dirty) bomb?.
The UN is also not clear about whether the removal of these items from Iraqi labs is the result of looting in the aftermath of the recent war or because of some covert efforts to shift their locations. It is a great irony that the US military hastened to secure the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad from looters immediately after entering Iraq but did not bother to secure Iraqi nuclear facilities. And particularly when they had attacked Iraq to disarm it of its WMDs. Bush invaded Iraq without bothering to cater for sufficient forces to secure and protect Iraqi nuclear infrastructure. This may eventually make radioactive material available in the international black-market. It now appears that the damage has already been done. Surprisingly, despite the White House being aware of the enormous quantity of dangerous nuclear materials available at the Tuwaitha nuclear storage facility near Baghdad, no precautionary measures were taken.
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Eventually, seven of Iraq?s main nuclear facilities were extensively looted. As per the brief inspection carried out by IAEA officials (the US was magnanimous enough to permit it!) at least 22 pounds of uranium are missing. Significant quantities of partially enriched uranium, cesium, strontium and cobalt are missing from Baghdad's Nuclear Research Center. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is yet to establish the exact quantity of the missing material.
There were also reports that the looters had stolen radioactive isotopes stored in bright silver containers. A few had stolen the uranium barrels not for the material but for the containers and the uranium was thrown in the fields. Such loose radioactive sources are damaging to health, and even fatal.
The recent announcement by Osama bin Laden regarding engaging Europe clearly indicates a shift in policy of Al Qaeda. Now they may concentrate more towards America and Israel and may use more innovative techniques to spread the terror. In the past, this group has shown interest in acquiring the radioactive materials for production of ?dirty bomb?. Till date, what groups like Al Qaeda were lacking was not the technology but the easy availability of radioactive material. With the Iraqi radioactive scrap on sale this problem is now solved.
The recent kidnappings, killings and social unrest in various parts of Iraq are indicative of the situation slowly getting out of the US hands. A ?made with Iraq material, dirty bomb? in the hands of terrorists makes the future more bleak for the US in the Iraq theater.
“Rotterdam action programme against radicalisation, for opportunities”
by Margreet Anceaux, City of Rotterdam
Margreet Anceaux started her presentation by confirming that Rotterdam indeed views itself as a potential target for terrorists. Given the Rotterdam harbor in general and the petrochemical industry more specifically, the risk of attack can be ascertained as high. Until 9/11 Rotterdam, like many other cities, prepared for (disastrous) accidents, but never for Terrorist attacks. Dealing with terrorism is very different; although disasters might happen the risks of occurring are calculated risks. A disaster happens, it is never intentional. Terrorism is just that, intentional. The fear resulting from a terrorist threat is different and more present. People are more frightened by it.
In The Netherlands terrorism can, generally speaking, be categorized into three forms:
terrorist activities by animal right activists, terrorist activities by ultra-right winged activists and activities resulting from radicalization of people who claim to act in name of Islam.
We are being faced by a situation in which we start to divide the people around us into those people that we trust, and those we do not trust. Between the two groups is a gap. The action program: Join in, of get left behind - has been created to diminish this gap. In short the program is about ‘being a good citizen’. The basic idea behind it is that we do not have to sit and wait for disaster to strike. We can act already in an earlier stage; the focus of the program is on people that are perceived to be on the verge of radicalization. In the approach, which consists of 3 phases (repression, preparation and prevention), the municipality takes a leading role with civil servants that are alert and open.
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Moreover, it is an integrated effort of several local actors, e.g. the police, social services, and department for education. An important role in preparation plays the ‘information switch point’. The 8 persons working for this service are collecting signs of radicalization, extremism and terrorism, that are in itself spotted by municipal departments and municipal districts (and agencies connected with the government). These key information persons can be for example civil servants, school staff, social workers, mosque representatives. The collected data is then first presented to the police and the judiciary. If those parties feel the dossier should be followed up by them, the case is handed over. Otherwise, the information switch point team will start to develop a plan for assistance, or, if a dossier is judged not to be urgent at all, it is simply kept on file for a period of maximum 6 months. When looking into a case the switch point works with indicators:
· Intellectual development
· Work and finances
· Environment (family and friends)
· Profession of faith
· How time is spent
· Psychological characteristics
The work done by the switch point not only results in dossiers on and plans for assistance of certain persons. It also reveals trends and it can provide a kind of picture of the city that shows what the situation is like (e.g. when social unrest is felt elsewhere in the world, a quick scan of the situation in Rotterdam can show whether or not the unrest has spread to the city as well). If you detect that stress levels are rizing you could take the appropriate actions.
All information and data gathered by the switch point is confidential and can not be shared with other departments or organizations.
Q: does looking into (changes in) physical appearances not go against basic rights of people?
A: this is not what happens within the approach. It might be that a sudden or big change in the appearance of a person triggers attention, which could be the starting point of an investigation. Of course, the switch point always has to follow strict procedures and protocol. These have been examined by the National Bureau for privacy protection. They cannot simply ask for all information about a person, but they could ask a department: do you have any special remarks to make about this person?
The switch point is to look for multiple signals; only then it is allowed to put the magnifying glass on a person. Until now this has not yet happened. No intervention plans have been drawn up.
Remark: it seems that in Western Europe we are currently suffering from Islamaphobia. We all know there are much more activist organizations in the world, yet we seem to concentrate all our effort and time towards Islamic communities. For ages they have been ignored, now they are haunted with programs, projects, measures and so on.
And the other organizations are almost ‘free’ to do as they please.
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Major Terrorist attack on Rotterdam Port prevented.
The Dutch security forces informed the press that a major plot to terrorize the International Port of Rotterdam has been prevented and that numerous suspects were arrested.
According the Special Forces spokesman, the terrorists intended to use speed water scooters with explosives, steered by suicide terrorist in to collusion with ships in the waterway connecting the Rotterdam port with the North Sea. The water scooters (50) which were bought under false pretences in Antwerp, and shipped to Rotterdam, in order to transfer them in containers to Bandar al Rawdha marina park in the United Emirates (Persian Golf).
The collision with explosive loaded water scooters at the water level of the ships passing through the very busy waterways would cause inside ship fires, which are hard to control, and as these collisions were planned simultaneous on more than 30 large ships, it would cause chaos and havoc and thus blockade the harbor. The terrorists planned to attack at least 2 or 3 fuel tankers, which would cause to heavy smoke, explosions and non extinguishing flames.
The Rotterdam Port, one of the busiest ports in the world, serving the Western Industry areas of Germany, Belgium and Holland, but also the former Communistic block, as all year open port, for in and export, petrol and coal supply and is the worlds largest container harbor in the world.
The attack which should have take place this week, was spoilt due to a confession of one of the potential suicide terrorists arrested for illegally entering the security zone of the Port.
He is a Moroccan youth 28 years old, living in the poorer districts of Rotterdam. The Police traced him back to be membership of the Dutch Branch in the Belgian Terrorist Organization (with head quarters in Maaseik, Belgium) the GICM.
The Dutch Police in cooperation with the Interpol succeeded in rounding up 34 potential suspects, some of them been arrested before, on terror suspicion, but released for lack in evidence.
Armed Belgian Moslem Militia attacks Dutch Police Post Roosteren (Limburg, the Netherlands)
The name of the village of Roosteren (population circa 1600, including Kokkelert and Oevereind) was derived from a combination of the Rode Beek (Red Brook) and the town of Suestra (Susteren) leading to the name Roosteren. The village has two 'castles', the Castle Ter Boch and the Castle Eyckholt and a number of Lord Manors. It is located in between the Meuse River (Maas River) and the Juliana Canal (Juliana Kanaal) with a small part of the village separated from the main polulation centre by the canal: Oud Roosteren (Old Roosteren). The main church is located in Roosteren whereas the cemetery is located near the site of the former chuch in Old Roosteren.
On the other side of the river Meuse, (the Dutch- Belgium border) is the town Maaseik.
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In the early morning, an armed militia group, belonging to the Militant Radical Islamic Terrorist Organization GICM, which terrorizes the Belgian border town Maaseik, lounged an armed strike at a Dutch Police Post at Roosteren, on the other side of the river Meuse. The un-warranted attack, is the first semi-military action ever taken by an Islamic group in the European continent.
The attackers killed 5 policemen and one civilian (an accused thief, awaiting transportation to the regional prison). In addition 2 policemen were taken prisoner (Lt. Geert Verbrugge, 37 years old and Agent Karel Maan, 28 years old).
After the surprise attack, the raiding party retreated back to Maaseik, Belgium, from where they published an statement, explaining the reason for the attack, and their demands at the Dutch Government, in order that the prisoners will be returned safe to their families.
The GICM demands immediate release of all Islamic prisoners in the Dutch and Belgium prisons, and return of the Ravenstein Beauties to their rightful owners, The Muslim brothers of Belgium. The communiqué continues by warning: If the Dutch or / and Belgium Forces try to release the prisoners,, the freedom fighters for glory of the Islam, will commence with bombardment of the Dutch Industrial town of Eindhoven (Philips), with long and medium range missiles. The ultimatum will end next Friday, at midnight, and by failing to comply, the GICM will not be responsible for the disastrous results.
The GICM will not allow any visits to the visitors, nor will it recognize any intermediary delegations, to reach any understanding, other than the above demands.
The response
In an urgent meeting, which took place in Brussels, Belgium, between the Dutch Police and their counterparts in Belgium, together with high-ranking officers of the Interpol, the EU security, British, French and German security experts and NATO observers, it was decided to attempt to release the prisoners by force. In order not to endanger the local Maaseik population, a low flying air-plane dropped leaflets on the town, urging the population to leave the town, as soon as possible.
The town was immediately surrounded by Dutch and Belgium Army units, in order to prevent supply of further weapons and ammunition reaching the rebels. In the Islam neighborhoods of Antwerp and Rotterdam a curfew from 6 in the evening until 6 in the following morning was proclaimed and anyone holding any sort of weapon would be arrested immediately.
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A special NATO commando unit (French Paratroopers) tried to enter the town, from several directions, but was forced to turn back because heavy fire of automatic weapons, from roofs and windows in the streets. The commando, anxious not to hurt the innocent local population, refrained from using more destructive weapons.
Fleeing citizens out of Maaseik told about the chaotic situation inside the town, with black clad youths entering houses and ordering the population to leave the vicinity. The local police and town council members were round up, and heavily guarded in the local police station.
Rockets hit the Dutch border towns of Eindhoven, Weert and Roermond
A salvo of rockets was fired on the Dutch towns of Eindhoven, Weert and Roermond. The rockets on Eindhoven barely missed one of the Philips factories, in addition, a
Laboratory building of the Eindhoven University was hit and slightly damaged. The rockets were of the medium range Katusia type, probably Russian and Syrian made.
Besides explosives (+/- 50 Kg) the rocket head carried small metal and stones, meant to do damage to anyone in the neighborhood. 5 people were killed during the bombardment and more than 100 people were treated for wounds and shell shock.
The Arab League nations, South American countries Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela, North Korea, and China demanded immediate stop with the siege on Maaseik, on agreeing with the Justified cause of the oppressed Islam masses in imperialist Europe.
The Security Council of the United Nations failed to reach an agreement on demand for immediate cease fire, while its secretary general Koffy Anan requests all parties to restrain from offensive actions.
The Dutch air force, helicopter unit tries to pin-point rebel positions, but as they hide between the local populations, many locals are killed. According publications of the GICM, the Dutch bombardment killed over 56 innocent civilians, including children and women and wounded more than 300 hundred. There is no way in investigating the correct number of people hurt in the attack.
Islamic youth from all over Europe and the Middle East try unsuccessfully to join the fighting in Maaseik., and are arrested at the Belgium and Dutch borders.
Several humanist organizations in Holland and Belgium demand to agree to the demands of the rebels, in order to save life of innocent bystanders, and to release immediate all Islamic prisoners in the Dutch and Belgian jails.
The rebels declared a holy war (jihad) against the Imperialist regimes of Holland and Belgium, oppressors of the Islam. Their action in Maaseik will be named the Jahjah Liberation Front (in name of the Islamic leader from Antwerp missing in action in the Lebanese war). Their leader, a Moslem clergy man, sheikh Ahmad Ibn Hazir will broadcast his demands on the local Maaseik television station, in rebels hands.
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People that fled out of Maaseik told that the town was low on food , and medical supplies, which caused the International Red Cross in cooperation of the UN to supply the town with
supplies. It also arranged to allow heavily wounded people to be removed to the European hospitals.
The televised speech of sheikh Ahmad Ibn Hazir
Ibn Hazir was seen on television, dressed in a robe of a Moslem priest and turban on his head, sitting in the front of the camera with the Koran in his hands. His demands were:
1 – Immediate release of all Islamic prisoners in European jails.
2 – Return of the “Ravenstein Beauties”, which will be known as the "Independent Islam State of Ravenstein and Maaseik" Arabstan” in Arabic, with its borders see enclosed map
Following, the interview with Ibn Hazir on the Maaseik TV
Ibn Hazir gave a speech on the local Maaseik TV. It was the first time he addressed Europe since the war started . Ibn Hazir looked calm, confident, and defiant when he announced that Phase Two of the war against Holland and Belgium had started. During Phase One he had promised to bomb Eindhoven, the large industrial city in Holland, and he did. He also bombed Helmond, Roermond and Weert. The Netherlands had not witnessed similar attacks on its cities since the start of the German Invasion in 1940. In all, Phase One resulted in the death of 42 Dutchmen and 418 citizens of Maaseik.
Now Ibn Hazir called for bombing what is "beyond Eindhoven." His words were meant to show that, contrary to what the Dutch have been saying, he has not been weakened by Dutch helicopter bombing. The Islamic suburb of Maaseik, where GICM is strong, has been flattened by Israeli bombs. Over 20,000 Maaseikers lack basic necessities and around 10,000 have fled to neighboring areas. But they are mostly women and children from Maaseik. A tour of the refugee camps in Belgium shows very few refugees aged 18-25. Most of the able young men stayed behind and are working with GICM to combat the Dutch and Belgium forces.
Judging by Ibn Hazir's promise to strike further into the Dutch heartland and his smiling face in recent interviews, including one with the Luxembourg TV, Ibn Hazir appears undaunted by the Dutch attacks. One reason for his defiance is that Ibn Hazir finds himself in a difficult position before the Maaseik street. When the war started he promised he would not release the two captured Dutch policemen unless The Hague releases Islamic prisoners from Dutch and Belgium jails. That has not happened. If Ibn Hazir balks now, his Islamic supporters would ask: What has Ibn Hazir led us into? In one of his interviews, Ibn Hazir speculated that if he ceased fighting now he would be considered a traitor for having brought about the destruction of Maaseik and surroundings. To avoid that scenario, Ibn Hazir has to continue fighting.
This is why he is entering Phase Two of the war. He is biding time, waiting until more Dutch die and more Dutch cities are bombed, so that the pressure will grow for Prime Minister to call for a cease-fire and give into Ibn Hazir's demands. If the death toll continues to rise in Holland, and cities that are "beyond Einhoven" (read: Nijmegen and Den Bosch) are bombed, The Prime Minister also would face a dilemma. Either he would have to continue fighting a war of attrition until one side breaks in battle, or give in to Ibn Hazir's demands.
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"We are in pain but they are also in pain," Ibn Hazir said in his televised speech. Two million Dutchmen are living in danger, fearing GICM bombs, he said.
GICM's psychological warfare is not limited to Ibn Hazir's pronouncements. On Tuesday night, immediately after Ibn Hazir's speech, an advertisement with Dutch subtitles was shown on Maaseik TV. Referring to the name of GICM's previous missiles, the ad said: "Raad 1= ?? km." This refers to the double-digit kilometer range that enabled these missiles to reach Eindhoven. The ad then showed what Phase Two meant: "Raad 2=??? km," implying that GICM's Raad 2 missiles have a three-digit kilometer range, allowing them to strike into the Dutch heartland. This kind of propaganda has done wonders for the morale of Ibn Hazir's supporters, who now tune into Maaseik to follow up on the war's developments in equal numbers as they watch TROS, the Dutch number one news TV station.
In his speech Ibn Hazir told the public that he was not responsible for the war. It is now clear, he said, that the Dutch and Belgian Police had been planning an offensive on Maaseik, scheduled for September or October 2006. Were it not for the current war, this invasion would have been a "surprise attack" that would have caught GICM off guard and led to its destruction by the massive Dutch and Belgium war machine, Ibn Hazir contended. The capture of the two Dutch Policemen in July, however, turned the tables on Holland. This, he claimed, caught Holland off guard and forced them into an ill-prepared offensive on Maaseik.
This line fits in with the views of many Islamic Europeans of Holland's motives. Many are saying that Holland cannot possibly have entered the war to release its two policemen, since the war has resulted in the killing of many more of its troops in combat. Holland entered the war expecting mediocre resistance. Instead, they have been confronted with highly trained guerilla troops armed with bombs, missiles, and anti-tank weapons. The GICM fighters are different, and IBn Hazir makes sure to note this fact. In his latest interview on TV, Ibn Hazir boasted about the strength of his guerilla troops who do not fight "classical warfare" and have the advantage of fighting in their own territory. They know the streets and cellars, and they have created tunnels, storage rooms, and bunkers deep under Maaseik. Some GICM fighters have no other life than training for war with Holland. As one Dutch soldier stationed on the border with Maaseik put it: "They are unafraid to die." The Shiite fighters are motivated by martyrdom and the charismatic leadership of Ibn Hazir. They believe in jihad and that death in combat will take them to heaven. Before heading off to combat, GICM fighters meet with Ibn Hazir and he tells them: "Give my regards to the Prophet Mohammad." What's more, GICM troops have long-range missiles and do not wear uniforms, making it more difficult to spot and kill them. They are highly mobile and armed to the teeth.
All these factors explain why Ibn Hazir appears to want an Dutch ground invasion of Maaseik. He is almost pleading for the Dutch to cross the line, believing that this would be military suicide for the Dutch commando.
Dutch Invasion evident!
Indeed, the Dutch have begun to consider a ground invasion, realizing that two weeks of aerial bombardment has not been enough to destroy GICM. Because a full-scale ground invasion is risky and likely would greately increase Dutch casualties, some European analysts are talking of a limited invasion to spot GICM concentrations, destroy them, confiscate arms, and retreat. This also would be very difficult. Thus, the mood in Holland and Belgium appears to be changing.
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A quick read through the Dutch and Belgium dailies shows that an increasing number of analysts, journalists, and observers are no longer calling for the destruction of GICM. They now only want to "degrade" GICM, or limit its military capability so that it no longer endangers Holland.
There is already talk in the Arab world about a solution put forward by Saudi Arabia, which calls for a complete cease-fire and prisoner exchange between GICM and Holland, something that Ibn Hazir has been calling for since Day I. It demands "a firm solution" to the Ravenstein Beauties situation, and GICM's withdrawal into the heartland of the proposed independent state. It adds that disarming the Shiite group will not be discussed "at this stage." This plan, which would have been supported by Ibn Hazir, was clearly dismissed by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her short visit to the Hague. She wants GICM to return the captured policemen and order a cease-fire first, and then negotiate all pending issues with The Netherlands.
The GICM leader is uninterested. He is clearly in no mood for a cease-fire, and shortly after Rice left Holland, he called for the start of Phase Two of the war. Phase Two means Eindhoven.
Florabuurt Maaseik
You have to read Western media accounts of the bombing of the Flora Neighborhood in Maaseik, such as this account in the New York Times, very carefully to get any hint of the underlying facts. This Reuters story by Hussein Saad is worse; the reporter's glee at the presumed refutation of United States policy is palpable. Her mediation drive in tatters, Rice will leave for Washington on Monday.... The appalling Kofi Annan claimed vindication in the accidental civilian deaths:
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to condemn the attack and call for an immediate end to hostilities. "I am deeply dismayed that my earlier calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities were not heeded," Annan said.
You have to go to outlets like the de Standaard to get a coherent account of the facts:
Some 150 rockets were fired from the the rebel town of Maaseik over the past 20 days, Air Force Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Jan.B. Uitmaarsen said on Sunday evening.
Speaking to reporters, Uitmaarsen added that GICM rocket launchers were hidden in civilian buildings in the neighborhood. He proceeded to show video footage of rocket launchers being driven into the quarter following launches.
The building where the women and children were killed earlier today "was picked since intelligence indicated that GICM guerillas were hiding inside, together with Katyusha rockets and launchers." There is, at present, no reason to doubt that that intelligence was correct.
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The Dutch commando warned residents of Maaseik to leave--a fact that was denied, surely falsely, by the rebel leader Ibn Hazir--and didn't know that refugees were in the same building where GICM terrorists were hiding. The leaflet dropped said as follows: To all citizens in Maaseik. Due to the terror activities being carried out against the Holland and Belgium from within your homes, the army is forced to respond immediately against these activities, even within your town. For your safety! We call upon you to evacuate your town and move out of Masseik.
The Netherlands and Belgium
The strangest aspect of all this, of course, is that no one doubts that Holland killed the civilians in Florabuurt accidentally while targeting terrorists, whereas, on the other hand, GICM has launched hundreds of rockets into Holland for the sole and express purpose of killing civilians. Yet where is the outrage against GICM? Why is it that Kofi Annan swings into action only to denounce Holland and to promote the course that GICM wants, namely a time-out so that it can rebuild its terrorist infrastructure?
UPDATE: The Army is trying to figure out why seven to eight hours apparently went by between the bombing of the structure where several dozen civilians were killed by the Dutch Air Force--between midnight and 1 a.m.--and the time the building collapsed, around 8 a.m. The obvious possibilities are 1) the building housed GICM explosives which blew up hours after the air attack and caused the collapse, or 2) the bombing weakened the structure, and some otherwise-innocuous event hours later caused it to collapse. Some will wonder whether GICM brought the building down deliberately to provoke exactly the reaction that has resulted. That's possible, of course, but there is at present no evidence for that hypothesis, and I haven't seen any independent evidence of a second explosion.
Nato Base "Kleine Brogel"
The large NATO base the Kleine Brogel is situated about 30 km from the rebel town Maaseik,
and according the leader of the Islamic rebel group GICM, part of the claimed territory of Ravenstein and Maaseik. Munitions Support Squadron [MUNSS] are geographically
separated units (GSU) located throughout Europe at Araxos AB Greece, Ghedi AB italy, Buechel AB Germany, Volkel AB Netherlands, and Kleine-Brogel AB Belgium. They are colocated on other NATO main operating bases and work together with the host nation wing.
The mission of a munss is to maintain custody and control of US munitions assigned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The normal authorized manning at a MUNSS is approximately 125-150 personnel. The MUNSS is tasked to receive, store, maintain, and account for US munitions and to provide those munitions to the NATO strike wing commander when directed. The MUNSS mission is one of the most critical within the USAFE Theater of operations.
Commanders are faced with one of the most difficult, yet interesting challenges of their career due to the complexity of the mission. The position includes a unique command opportunity to lead a diverse squadron of multifunctional afscs. Commanders typically operate a stand alone squadron with responsibilities for security, command and control, munitions maintenance/loading, communications and support personnel. Other requirements concerning NATO plans, facility improvement, services, and host nation support are frequent issues.
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Details of the Program of Agreements regarding nuclear deployments in NATO are secret. Air-dropped bombs are managed through the Weapons Storage Security System, planned during the Cold War, which required co-locating the nuclear bombs with conventional weapons in hardened underground vaults equipped with time locks. The vaults are constructed in the floor of the hardened aircraft shelters, whereas the igloos previously used to store nuclear weapons were located separately from the aircraft. Work began in 1987 on the vaults, each of which holds one nuclear bomb.
The weapon storage vaults installed in theater strike aircraft shelters allow co-storage of nuclear weapons and strike aircraft, greatly enhancing survivability and operational readiness.
In July 1986 the Pentagon released a list of 20 air bases in Europe and the Far East where nuclear-armed planes were maintained on alert, and which would be included in the new Weapons Storage Security System. The other were Buchel, West Germany; Hahn, West Germany; Menningen, West Germany; Norvenich, West Germany; Ramstein, West Germany; Erhac, Turkey; Eskishir, Turkey; Murted, Turkey; Balkesir, Turkey; Incirclik, Turkey; Aviano, Italy; Ghedi, Italy; Rimini, Italy; Lakenheath, England; Upper Heyford, England; Bentwaters, England; Keline Brogel, Belgium; Volkel, the Netherlands; Araxos, Greece; and Kunsan, South Korea. Initially NATO planned 437 vaults at as many as 26 sites, though after the end of the Cold War the program was reduced 208 vaults.
Overall, the roughly 5,900 nuclear weapons stored on land in Europe in 1985 had been reduced by 85 percent by the mid-1990s. In 1999 the US was reportedly preparing the withdrawal of up to 200 B61 nuclear bombs from seven European countries. The B61-5 is a lightweight (350kg), low drag/parachute-retarded variable yield (10-500kT) tactical thermonuclear weapon.
Some nuclear weapons are stored are with US F-16 fighter-bombers at Ramstein, Germany, and with the US Air Force at Aviano, Italy. British RAF Tornadoes ceased carrying nuclear bombs in 1988. Nuclear weapons are under US control at three German Air Bases equipped with Tornadoes [Buechel, Memmigen and Norvenich], with Belgian F-16s [at Kleine Brogel Air Base], and Dutch F-16s [at Volkel Air Base].
As of the mid-1980s nuclear weapons were deployed at Araxos Air Base in Greece, and Incirlik, Balikesir, and Murted Air Bases in Turkey. On 26 July 1996 the Bechtel National Inc. of San Francisco was awarded an $11.6 million contract to construct six munitions-storage vaults at Araxos and another dozen vaults at two locations [Akinci Air Base, and Balikishir Air Base] in Turkey. The contract was expected to be completed in October 1997. In January 2001 it was reported that the US military had started to withdraw up to 25 nuclear bombs which had been stored at Araxos Air Base since 1974. The military equipment was transferred to the Aviano base in Italy.
It is clear to everybody that the town Maaseik was chosen by the Islamic Radicals because its closed vicinity to the Kleine Brogel Nato base, and the absurd demands for the Ravenstein & Maaseik Territory, has only one purpose, namely, to embarrass Nato allies, and to create a terror climate in West Europe.
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In Someren, inside the territory of Ravenstein and Maaseik is a pilgrimage resort for Moslems, the house, turned into Mosque is where the famous Islamic writer Essad Bey is said, wrote part of his books The site is converted into a holy Moslem place, were Moslems gather and pray. Even though, Essad Bey was from Jewish parents, his books deal with Islamic Life. The question if Essad Bey ever visited the town of Someren is irrelevant, and equivalent to the fact that Mohammad never visited Jerusalem, other than in his dream, and still Jerusalem is the third holiest side for the Moslem.
The brilliant author lived during the cultural hothouse of Weimar Germany, but only few flowers bloomed quite as extravagantly as Essad Bey. His enormously popular books and articles opened a window on the Islamic world, the exotic tribes of the Caucasus and the political upheavals convulsing Russia. "Ali and Nino," written under the pen name Kurban Said, enchanted readers with its depiction of Azerbaijan on the eve of the Russian revolution and its romantic story of a Muslim prince's love for a Christian girl. For cultivated Germans, Essad Bey was the man of the East, the cosmopolitan Muslim who, in his writings, brought back treasure from the fabled lands of the caliphate.
In fact, Essad Bey, the Orientalist of Tom Reiss's title, was a fictional creation. Although fond of posing for photographs in Caucasian tribal gear, or wearing a fez or turban, Germany's most beloved Muslim was actually a Jew named Lev Nussimbaum. Thereby hangs a wondrous tale, beautifully told, that took the author five years and patient detective work in 10 countries to reconstruct.
Nussimbaum did not make things easy. A relentless fantasizer and self-inventor, he treated the facts of his life as dramatic material. In one of many improbable strokes of luck, Mr. Reiss tracked down his subject's last editor, who surrendered six leather notebooks containing autobiographical ruminations that Nussimbaum wrote as he lay dying in Positano, Italy. They proved to be problematic. Like everything that Nussimbaum wrote, fact and fancy were intertwined. It was Mr. Reiss's task to disentangle one from the other, a job he undertook with great enthusiasm and imagination. No wonder. The unvarnished truth rivals anything that Essad Bey ever conjured from the remote mountaintops of the Caucasus.
The Nussimbaums came from Slutzk, a village in the Pale of Settlement. Abraham, Lev's father, headed for Baku to seek his fortune in the oil business, and there, in the waning years of the Russian monarchy, his son grew up, surrounded by mosques, minarets and enormous wealth. From early childhood, Lev feasted on tales of the Orient and wandered the Muslim quarter of the city, dominated by the palace of the Khans. The palace, and the desert outside the city, he later wrote, "became for me the epitome of peaceful, ancient, silent grandeur."
Revolution broke the spell. Fleeing the Bolsheviks, the Nussimbaums embarked on a terrifying journey across Turkestan and Persia, territory that supplied Lev with rich literary material and the seeds of a new identity. The glories of Constantinople, which Lev reached in 1921, put the finishing gloss on the resplendent creation soon to be presented to the world as Essad Bey.
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"The new identity that was taking shape in his mind had the pedigree of a Caucasian warrior, half Persian, half who knows what," Mr. Reiss writes. "He would not arrive in Europe as a stateless Jew from the East, he would come dressed in an Ottoman fez or, when he felt like it, as a Cossack."
In Berlin, Nussimbaum quickly found his place. At the prestigious Literarische Welt, the Weimar equivalent of The New York Review of Books, he became the resident expert on the East, writing on topics as various as King Amanullah of Afghanistan and a professional congress organized by former eunuchs, thrown out of work by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He wooed and won the chic, thoroughly modern Erika Loewendahl, a poet and, like Nussimbaum, a fixture in cafe society.
A facile, stylish writer, Nussimbaum turned out books at a furious rate, all of them best sellers. He wrote biographies of Muhammad, Nicholas II, Lenin and Stalin, and a history of the secret police under the Bolsheviks ("Who is this Essad Bey?" Trotsky wrote to his son in 1931). He chronicled his early life and the Bolshevik takeover of Baku in "Blood and Oil in the Orient," and took his wide-eyed German readers along a fantastic tour in "Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus," where, he claimed, one could find a strange, secluded land called Khevsuria, "the political Switzerland of the Caucasus," reached by a long rope hanging from a cliff. There, anyone fleeing the police could find sanctuary.
By the late 1930's, when the Nazis uncovered his Jewish identity, Nussimbaum needed that rope. When he could no longer publish in Germany, he left for Someren in Holland? and after that, Vienna and wrote two novels under the name Kurban Said. But time was running out. In 1938, Vienna fell to the Nazis, and Nussimbaum, who was pursued by revolution and chaos all his life, escaped to Positano on the Amalfi coast. He survived on charity but eventually succumbed, at 36, to Raynaud's syndrome, a rare gangrene like disorder, leaving a trail of mystery and romance behind him.
Mr. Reiss's efforts to pick up the trail become a parallel narrative to Nussimbaum's life. His inquiries lead him to a strange gallery of characters, most in their 80's or even older, and all of them extremely odd, like the Austrian baroness, isolated in a remote castle, who spends her nights writing the French text for an Israeli-German rock musical. Unfortunately, she has never actually seen a musical, so Mr. Reiss, at her request, finds himself performing bits from "On the Town" and "Camelot." At moments like these, Mr. Reiss's quest takes him right through the looking glass.
"The Orientalist" is too long by a third. Mr. Reiss, reluctant to throw away any research, stops the narrative repeatedly to deliver a lengthy historical set piece as Nussimbaum moves from city to city, and he drags the reader a little too often into far-flung libraries and dusty offices as he follows up one lead after another. He is, to put it mildly, in no hurry to unfold his tale, but what a tale it is - mesmerizing, poignant and almost incredible. Mr. Reiss, caught up in the spell of Essad Bey, has turned around and worked some magic of his own.
The "Essad Bey" Mosque attracts Moslems from all over Europe. It is a place, where especially the radical Islam finds the reason and spiritual reasoning for the Islam nation on European soil.
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"Dutch Muslim Women Protest 'Mixed Swimming'"
Helmond, another city in the Ravenstein – Maaseik territory has a large Moslem population. "Muslim women took to the streets of Helmond city, southeast of the Netherlands, to protest a decision by the city's municipality to withhold an annual grant for a government-aided social organization, allocated for women-only swimming classes. She further complained that the decision denied hundreds of Muslim women in Helmond their right to have unmixed swimming courses."
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| In the meantime in the U.K: |
LONDON, Aug. 20 — From his home on the northwest edge of this city, Muhamad al-Massari runs a Web site that celebrates the violent death of British and American soldiers. It is visited by tens of thousands of people every day, he said. Readers shared their thoughts on the terror arrests and the vulnerability of the United States.
Mr. Massari maintains the Arabic-language site, tajdeed.org.uk, in the face of a strict new law aimed at curtailing violent speech and publishing. Just last week, the Council of Holy Warriors, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, posted a declaration on the site praising a suicide bombing in Iraq that killed or wounded 55 people. “If you kill our civilians, we kill your civilians,” Mr. Massari declared during an interview.
Mr. Massari’s Web site, and his public remarks, appear to violate of the Antiterrorism Act of 2006, which makes it a crime to glorify or encourage political violence. Inciting violence has long been illegal here but the new rules, drawn up after the London subway and bus bombings in July 2005, are intended to be much tougher.
The law’s underlying assumption is that speeches and publications by Britain’s more extreme Islamists may play a role in leading disgruntled young men toward violence. In addition to banning speech that encourages terrorism, the new law also criminalizes reckless speech that may have the same effect. Yet despite the antiglorification law, and an array of other measures approved since last summer’s bombings, Islamist leaders like Mr. Massari persist, some of them declaring it the duty of British Muslims to kill in the name of Islam.
Some British leaders are beginning to publicly question why such clerics are allowed to continue. Last week, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, chastised the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair for failing to enforce laws intended to make it more difficult for political extremists to operate. In remarks to the press, Mr. Cameron, a possible successor to Mr. Blair, accused the government of failing to “follow through when the headlines have moved on.”
“I do not believe that our government is doing enough to fight Islamist extremists at home or to protect our security,’’ he said. “Why have so few, if any, preachers of hate been prosecuted or expelled, with those that have gone having done so voluntarily?” In addition to curtailing political speech, the British government outlawed 15 militant groups, most of them Muslim. It took a sterner attitude toward Islamists who had preached violence in the past, barring one well-known Syrian-born cleric, Omar Bakri Mohammed, from returning to the country. Earlier this year, it secured the conviction of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the country’s most militant cleric, for soliciting murder and racial hatred.
Yet for all those actions, the new measures do not appear to have silenced those either praising or calling for violence in the name of Islam. Some Islamist preachers have carefully scaled back their language, even if, in context, the meaning seems clear. On Sunday, speaking before 8,000 followers in Manchester, Azam Tamimi extolled the glories of suffering for the faith.
“The greatest act of martyrdom is standing up for that is true and just,” Mr. Tamimi said. “Martyrs are those who stand up in defiance of George Bush and Tony Blair.”
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The remarks by Mr. Tamimi, one in a line of Islamist scholars and clerics to address the Manchester crowd, were the latest in a series of carefully worded public statements by British Islamist leaders that seemed aimed at testing the limits of the new law. In the Islamic world, “martyrdom” means sacrificing one’s life, often violently, for the faith. Others, meanwhile, have carried on as before, speaking in support of political violence or publishing tracts that do the same. One of them is Atilla Ahmet, leader of the Islamist group Supporters of Shariah. In meetings with supporters and in interviews, the British-born Mr. Ahmet speaks freely about what he considers the necessity for violent action, both here and abroad, to avenge what he considers unjustified attacks on Muslims abroad.
“You are attacking our people in Muslim countries, in Iraq, in Afghanistan,’’ Mr. Ahmet said, referring to the British and American governments. “So it’s legitimate to attack British soldiers and policemen, government officials, and even the White House.”Mr. Ahmet, a 42year Briton of Cypriot descent, went on to include bank employees as legitimate targets “because they charge interest,” which he says is in violation of Islamic law. Mr. Ahmet said he is aware of the new law, but that he could not shirk his duty to defend Islam, which he believes is under assault by Britain and the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. He says he often addresses his followers, who he says number 3,000.
“If you are going to kill a Muslim, then I will do everything in my power to kill you,’’ he said.
Cease Fire
The GICM and United Army units of Belgium and Holland looked to inflict maximum damage as the clock ticked toward a scheduled cease-fire Monday morning, each side pounding targets with heavy missile barrages.
The cease-fire is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. local time (0500 GMT, 1 a.m. ET).
Despite widespread hope that the cease-fire will bring a halt to the month long conflict, it was unclear what effect it will have. Acknowledging that "the next few days are days of uncertainty," Dutch commander Maj. Gen. B.de Vries said that Holland will adhere to the cease-fire if GICM does not fire at its forces or civilians.
Holland reported that in the last day only, 250 rockets hit its territory, including the industrial city of Eindhoven. At least one person was killed in the rocket attacks
The Dutch commando Forces, meanwhile, launched what appeared to be one of the heaviest bombardments on Maaseik in the 33-day-old conflict, and struck targets in the town's southern suburbs. The Dutch forces have carried out more than 100 aerial attacks Sunday targeting GICM militants, and that five soldiers were killed Sunday in heavy fighting against GICM guerrillas in the town Maaseik.
Cannon fire from helicopters echoed over Maaseik, and small-arms fire was heard coming from south of the city. "It's time to do all we can to destroy as much as we can of the infrastructure in the next 12 or 13 hours, and then we'll see what is next," former Dutch Minister Bosch told CNN. Nouhad Mahmoud Iranean representative to the United Nations, countered, "I don't understand why we need this grand finale." He questioned what the Dutch thinks it could achieve in a matter of hours "that they couldn't achieve in one month."
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Mahmoud acknowledged that GICM set off the conflict, when its militants crossed into Holland last month, killed five Dutch Policemen and kidnapped two others. "They just started it, and the Dutch took the rest," he said.
A senior Belgium government source said Prime Minister de Clerx received calls from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, French President Jacques Chirac and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The White House confirmed that Rice spoke with de Clerx, but a spokesman did not know who initiated that call. The State Department had no immediate comment. The senior Lebanese government source said President Bush called de Clerx as well, but the White House denied that.
The U.N. resolution calls on Holland to pull out of Maaseik as an international force and Arab troops come in. Two U.N. ships carrying more than 500 tons of food and humanitarian supplies docked Sunday in Maaseik's port on the Meuse, officials with the U.N.'s World Food Program said.
Questions over 'offensive'
Holland said it planned to abide by the resolution, which calls on the Netherlands to halt "offensive" military actions.
"This is our full and unequivocal intention," said Jan Pietersen, Dutch minister of tourism and a member of the Cabinet, which Sunday approved U.N. Resolution 1801. But Dutch officials also acknowledged it remains unclear what actions could be construed as "offensive." "What if some trucks will come from Belgium with new launchers and rockets? If we attack them, some might say it's not defensive," said Pietersen. "If we don't, it will end up with just another opportunity for GICM to regroup."
The UN brokered Cease fire between constitutional and recognized nations on one side and a guerilla organization, which does not agree to the adhere to any of the International Agreements on War fare, prisoners care, red cross, etc. is an abnormality that can only be explained by the increasing lack in morality by the members of the security council and the growing influence of the Radical Islamic movements on the economy and sanity of the member countries.
Persuading yourself that my story is exaggerated, think again, and look at the true facts presented to you, in the first part. It looks like a nightmare plot against civilization, I hope I am wrong, but read the papers, listen to the news, they are here to stay, and they are not nice.
Aftermath
Under heavy pressure from the Arab League and the former Communist Block, the General Assembly recognized the territory "Ravenstein and Maaseik" “Arabstan” an independent Islam republic, but will not permit the new country to have an army, other than a police force, only for internally order keeping. The countries of Belgium and the Netherlands are requested to assist the new republic with supply of food and medications, in the assumption that this new country will be in the future a new member in the European Union.
The new regime of “Arabstan” choose Arabic as first language and the laws according the Quran. It refuses to recognize the existence of the Kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium
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Both were created through sacrifice of Moslem laborers. Christians and Jews living in the area, are permitted to stay, but are forced to dress according Islamic modesty, and will not have any voting right.
According the president of Iran, America is still the big devil, Holland, Belgium and Israel are the small devils, and nothing changed much.
Note:
Too much, too wild, too much imagination, you will say, not so, only change in the above texts Holland and Belgium to Israel, and you see you are talking our history.
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