The New Decalogue

Commandment 1 - 10: "Thou Shalt Not Hurt Muslims" ... and specifically not with the truth.

A leading member of Germany’s federal bank (Bundesbank) and former finance minister for Berlin, has caused "outrage" by speaking the truth.

Thilo Sarrazin (65) holds a doctorate of economics from Bonn University, in 1975, he began working in the Federal Ministry of Finance, until 1981 he served as Head of Unit in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, 1981 he returned to the Federal Ministry of Finance. From October 1981 he served as bureau chief and was a close collaborator of then Federal Finance Minister Hans Matthöfer and his successor Manfred Lahnstein. Even after the end of the socialdemocratic-liberal coalition in October 1982, Sarrazin remained in the Finance Ministry, where he became director of several units, including (from 1989 to 1990) the "Innerdeutsche Beziehungen" (inner-German relationships) unit, from where the German monetary, economic and social union was kicked off. From 1990 to 1991 Sarrazin worked for the Treuhand. Then he was up to 1997 State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance in Rhineland-Palatinate. Subsequently, he was chief executive of TLG Immobilien, a Treuhand successor, before he became finance minister in Berlin. He is still a member of the Social Democrats (SPD).

A heavyweight by any other name.

Now he has written a book titled "Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen" -- "Germany Does away/Abolishes Itself: How we Jeopardize Our Country". His concern is that immigrants who do not integrate are undermining German identity.

The thrust of the book is particularly aimed at -- who would have thought so -- Muslims. Sarrazin points out that only 3% of men of Turkish origin and only 8% of women of Turkish origin marry Germans. This compares badly with other groups, he says. He says that in Berlin 20% of all acts of violence are carried out by only 1,000 Turkish and Arab youths; a population group that makes up only 0.03% of the actual population in Berlin.

"I don’t want the country of my grandchildren and forefathers to be in broad swathes Muslim, where Turkish and Arabic is widely spoken, where women wear headscarves and where the daily rhythm of life is set by the call of the muezzin", Sarrazin wrote in an extract published in Der Spiegel on August 22.

He says of Islam that "with no other religion is there such a fluid connection between violence, dictatorship and terrorism as there is with Islam". He says "boys are taught an exaggerated idea of the readiness to be violent... for the sake of honour you must take the role all the more seriously the less successful you are in the school system". He says that Muslim immigrants are "unwilling or incapable of integrating into Western society". He says that Germany is on the road to ruin because of the influx of immigrants from the Middle East which would overwhelm the indigenous population and create a nation of ‘dunces’. He says that in particular Muslims are failing to integrate. He says that this has been going on virtually since the war since when the birthrate of native Germans has been steadily falling. He says that the result has been a "dramatic fall" in literacy and numeracy. He says, too, that "Germany is becoming more stupid".

All that is true.

The reactions are stunning, but not amazing.

Kenan Kolat, a leading member of the Turkish community, who thinks that the Turkish genocide of the Armenians ought not to be taught in schools becaus this would put "psychological pressure" on Turkish pupils and will endanger "national peace" (sic!), and who, notabene, prefers the word "participation" to "integration", labelled Sarrazin's stance "pure racism" and called on the Bundesbank to sack him. "This man is trying to reduce the problem (of integration) to the ethnic origin of people and is then vilifying them on that basis". Well on what else? We don't have major problems with other immigrants.

The Central Council of Muslims (shrewdly named after the "Central Council of Jews" to give it credibility it doesn't possess) called him "the embodiment of an ugly German" and its speaker Aiman Mazyek "a Nazi in pinstripes", something of which nobody would accuse Mr. Mazyek (below left).

The board of the Muslim Central Council: Aiman Mazyek, Dr. Ayyub Axel Köhler (German convert), Maryam Brigitte Weiß (German convert), Burhanettin Dag, Yakup Tufan.

Siemens boss Peter Loescher (not in this picture -- yet and just), stated with refreshing honesty that Sarrazin's comments "are damaging the international reputation of Germany as a business location". Yes, Germans really get that democracy and free speech thingy. It must be in their genes.

But it gets better. In a newspaper interview about his book Sarrazin said that "all Jews share a gene", which accounts for their higher intelligence. While this true as well, to Germans, that's even a bigger howler than accusing Muslims not to integrate. What a wonderful opportunity to show "how much we have learned from our past". The mob devours Sarrazin. Calling for the burning of his book will be the logical next step.

German’s Jewish community reacted with scorn and horror and accused Sarrazin of -- you've guessed it -- antisemitism and of calling for racial profiling. "Whoever tries to define Jews by their genetic make up succumbs to racism", so Stephan Kramer, secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and a convert to Judaism from the people of perpetrators. Kramer's general record gives reason for the question whether he was planted as an agent provocateur to give Jews a bad name.

Germany’s openly homosexual Vice-(pun intended)-Chancellor and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle who is, somewhat understandibly, wildly into politically correct causes, accused the banker of hate speech and, given his intellectual capacities, I wonder how long it took him to come up with something quite that original. He thinks, too, that remarks that feed racism or even (sic!) antisemitism have no place in our political discourse. And all that in an interview with the smutty weekly "Bild am Sonntag", no less.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned Sarrazin for making "stupid and pointless" statements. His book, she said, isn't "helpful", as if her job was to issue book reviews and even before the book was on the market. She said, too, that the Bundesbank should discuss dismissing him, which is none of her business either. A spokesman for the Bundesbank said in an e-mail statement, that the book is Sarrazin’s "private affair" and the opinions he expresses are unrelated to his work, something Merkel, who holds a doctorate in physics, is obviously too dumb to twig.

Meanwhile, the assorted Chamber of Horrors exhibits crawled out from under their stones. Professor Wolfgang Benz, a discredited but nonetheless, or rather therefore, terrifically successful "antisemitism researcher", called Sarrazin's theses -- surely you've guessed this as well -- racist and himself a squaller, lout and somebody who caters for the bowel-movements of the social majority. Well yes. Now we know at least what the "antisemitism researcher" thinks of democracy. Likewise, ex-bishopette Margot "Boozebitch" Kässmann, who is treated by the public and the media as if she had (almost) died for our sins and not driven her official car pissed as a newt through a German city, showed even more powerful creativity by calling Sarrazin "dehumanizing". Burp!

Media personality Michel Friedman who had fallen even deeper than fun-loving boozette Kässmann through an affair involving cocain usage and forced prostitutes from Eastern Europe, has as well long ago made a triumphant comeback because German television, shallow and whorish as it is, allowed it. Friedman, now heavily married and a family man, obviously needed, after his vocal condemnation of Pope Benedict in 2009, another whipping boy to attract what he loves most: attention. "We need bridge builders in Germany, not hate preachers." Well, yes, whatever.

Aygül Özkan, that insufferable simpering fool they made "minister for integration" in the state of Lower Saxony (that's the one who had nothing better to do than to discuss the removal of crucifixes from classrooms before she was even sworn in, to later fail with an attempt at curbing the freedom of the press) accused Thilo Sarrazin, and, too, in smutty "Bild am Sonntag", of "malice" and to "hurt migrants". While, say, pedophilia has become a venial sin as long as it's not a Catholic priest who practises it (and in case of Muslims it's not a sin at all), "Thou shalt not hurt Muslims" -- and specifically not with the truth -- has become the only commandment of importance.

All of them are, of course, not populist, only Thilo Sarrazin is that.

I have limited this entry for obvious reasons more or less to people I have covered before in this blog. It is impossible to even begin to give an impression of what is really going on, of the veritable witch hunt that is in full fly in Germany right now. A man who is, to all intents and purposes, a heavyweight and qualified by training and professional experience to speak expertly on many issues, is marginalized, ridiculed, dismissed by people who are not worth to clean his office lavatory. It is spooky, eerie, surreal. An entire people seems to have become mad. Utterly, stark, barking, clinically insane. An entire people hunts down a man who dares to speak the truth, a people who are put under pressure and threats by Muslims, threats which increase in severeness and frequency on a daily basis, a people that is bled white financially and emotionally by ever increasing strident demands and greed for power of a group of hostile aliens, and what is the worst: they are really and truly believing that they are being noble and doing the right thing.

And now, I think, the question is in order whether I have read Sarrazin's book myself. No I haven't. This is not a book review, but a report of the mood in Germany. Why didn't I read it? Simple! I tried to get one yesterday, the day after publication. When I looked at Amazon, it was sold out, all four editions. When I called the local bookshop, I got the same answer. All four editions means 180,000 copies. More to come in two weeks. I guess this, at least, is good news.

A Tale of Two 31-Year Old Mothers

The repercussions for all of Germany following the murder of a 31-year old Muslim woman from Egypt by a passport-German from Russia in a German courtroom are remarkable and dramatic and remarkably dramatic. All honour killings and other crimes within the Muslim counter-culture, all killings, mutilations and beatings-up of Germans by our Muslim "culture enrichers" are, as far as they got any attention at all, forgotten. They were "isolated cases" anway, whereas for this, really isolated, case all Germans are held responsible, a crime committed by a man who wasn't even socialised within the evil "islamophobic" German culture.

Indeed, the media echo is stunning. A quick Google-search just for the name of the victim reveals amazing results. "Martyr", "headscarf" and "pregnant" are the feeds that mainly catch the eye. Of course, the German results are almost identical, with the German equivalents of "hate crime" and "racism" thrown in.

All of Germany is wallowing orgasmically, like swine wallow in dirt, in their own moral squalor. They love that.

And moral squalor it is indeed, just not in the way they see it.

The secretaries of both, the Central Council of Jews, convertite Stephan Kramer, and the Central Council Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, had the mutual enemy quickly identified and visited the widower together to express their sincere hypocrisy.

The French Figaro, so Gudrun Eussner informs me, quotes in today's print issue on page 7 the same Aiman Mazyek who states that "total (sic!) religious freedom" must be defended, part of which is the wearing of the headscarf:..."liberté réligieuse totale, dont fait partie le port du voile."

Has anybody still any doubt that we in the West are in a total (sic!) and global war with Islam?

Even such experts on human rights like Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution (SCCR) chimed in, the latter issuing a statement saying the murder of Marwa al-Sherbini in Germany demonstrated the West’s disrespect to human rights.

And nobody laughed.

The most revealing aspect was, however, that even such an obscene extravaganza of German self-hatred and submission wasn't enough for the trailblazing whips (or rather: "whippettes") of dhimmitude. Andrea Dernbach, who has proven her ethical depth and moral prowess already by a justification of sex with children to clear Islam of the suspicion of homophobia, asked under the header "Germany's new hatred": "Why does the death of a woman wearing a headscarf – who wasn’t the victim of a so-called “honour killing” – spark so little interest in Germany?"

So far, so bad, but lately we seem even to export that specific brand of Islam-adoring journalettes, maybe because whatever Germans do, they do thoroughly. And indeed, under the even more incredible header "A murder that Germany ignored" a woman with a German-sounding name whines (in the Al Guardian, no less!) about what must be, I don't have any other explanation, the figment of an oestrogen-addled brain, and doesn't even shy away from repeating an outlandish, preposterous accusation from the Muslim media:

They [the German media] could have asked – as an Egyptian did – why Marwa's husband, while he was trying to help his wife, was shot and wounded by a policeman in the courtroom. Because he was not blond-haired?

I am not a prolific letter-to-the-editor-writer, but this time I couldn't help myself:

Your name suggests that you can read German. So you either have an agenda or you are out of your mind. The German media is, since that crime happened, in an orgiastic, self-hating frenzy. "Germans! She died for your sins!" And you are SERIOUSLY selling the above drivel to an unsuspecting Guardian readership? The day the countless ethnic Germans who are beaten to a pulp or killed by our Muslim culture enrichers get at least a fifth of the media attention this case got and it still getting, I will stop worrying what makes people like you tick.

Elsewhere, in Iran, the 31-year-old mother of two, Mohabat Mahmodi, will be executed within the next couple of days, because she killed her rapist in self-defense.*

And nobody cares. They are all too busy being outraged by German islamophobia.

---

*Information from an email by Mina Ahadi, exile-Iranian and secretary of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany.

The Editrix Apologises or: Roncesvalles Multiple Redux II

I am sorry! I'm really sorry! I'm deeply and seriously repentant.

Why?

It is, because I have called the Rhenish carnival a heathen spectacle where pissed-as-a-newt scum hits the streets (or something to the same effect).

I am sorry. I repent.

This year, the valiant carnivalists of the city of Düsseldorf, one of the three strongholds of the Rhenish carnival (Cologne and Mainz being the others), where more than half a million people watched the traditional Rose Monday Parade, sent one themed wagon (or is is a float?) on its way, carrying two identical "mullah" figures, each wearing a suicide-bomber's belt and brandishing scimitar and gun. One was labelled "the cliché," the other one "the reality."

The messages of the floats have to be, naturally, succinct, and frankly, as much as I hate so say it, that's a seriously good one! Succinct, to the point, illustrative, illuminating.

Of course, Muslims were miffed. Aiman A. Mazyek, Secretary General of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, found that

This hasn't got anything to do with humour. I am reading the message like this: 'We love our prejudices, we'll defend them, even even with flagrant lies, if necessary.'... "As a born-and-bred Rhinelander, I am rather laid back about it. I'm sure most of the Jecken [carnival celebrants] don't want to make Islam-despising cynicism acceptable.

Then why say anything at all?

That is the same Aiman A. Mazyek, mind you, who wants to see more jokes about Islam.

I, too, would have liked to smile and laugh at Muslims. Is that not permitted? Who is prohibiting it? Maybe a Fatwa? A body of censors? Notabene, I am talking about laughing, not hurtful sneering at or dirty jokes about Islam. One can very well make fun of a Muslim without hurting his dignity or can't one? One can waffle about his putative flaws without besmirching his religion.

Well, he is saying it loud and clear himself, or isn't he? It is only permitted to make jokes about PUTATIVE flaws of the religion od peace. The real ones are taboo.

And, Aiman, as much as I hate to say it, you are NOT a "born-and-bred Rhinelander". A pig that is born in a kennel is no dog either. A Rhinelander has a sense of humour, however grotty it may be. He will be able to laugh about himself and his ilk. And if that is too involved a concept for you, here is an example, picture included: Rhinelanders are Catholics and here you see a float from the 2005 Cologne parade with a theme that was certainly very offensive to a lot of Rhinelanders (and other Catholics), namely Cardinal Meisner burning a woman who had had an abortion at the stakes. Nobody rioted, nobody was miffed, and if they were, they kept their traps shut. It was, after all, carnival.

At the same time when you and your co-religionists took offense, the parade in Mainz showed Pope Benedict colliding in his Papamobil with a minaret, thus making fun of his perfectly justified criticism of Islam. Guess what? I found that offensive. And I am sure a lot of others did too. But I kept my trap shut because it was carnival. And I am not even a Rhinelander (Thank God for that!).

However, you and your ilk have one advantage over the pig born in a kennel. You can change -- theoretically, that is. Yes, you could become dogs. You would just have to accept the culture into which you were born as yours. I mean really accept. Not just the affluent lifestyle, the concept of charity (of which you are only too often at the receiving end), the freedom and the tolerance towards yourself, but the sides you don't like as well. For example the concept that freedom, tolerance and charity are not a cul-de-sac.

Read the great satirical online-magazine The Onion, Aiman. Specifically the bit about the Crazed Palestinian Gunman who felt hurt by the negative portrayal of his people in the media and thought that he should not "have to live with stereotyping and ignorance… Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I'm going to open fire… That really hurts."

So The Onion twigged almost to the day ten years ago that you are laughing stock. Maybe it is time that you do, too.

That was all for now!

On an additional note, not too surprisingly, the Green Party stridently condemned the Islam-criticising display. Volker Beck, secretary of the parliamentary group of the Greens within the Bundestag, said to the netzzeitung: "This is all but funny."

That is the same Volker Beck, mind you, who once openly asked for the "de-criminalisation" of sex with children. With getting more politically savvy, he is not so outspoken about it anymore, but, as Mark Twain observed, "You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into" and professions about being a reformed paederast campaigner sound somewhat lame. However, Volker seems to overlook that he, as a practising homosexual, might, like other homosexuals did, end up swinging from a rope at a crane without even a smidgeon of gratefulness for his as touching as gratuitous tolerance and understanding of other cultures, in which, by the way, homosexuality is a tabooed as widely practised, not to speak of paedophilia.

Which would be all but funny.

The Nonexistent Correlation between Violence and Faith

A German study which suggests that there is a correlation between violence and religiosity among young Muslim males is -- will wonders ever cease -- not well received among Muslims.

Berlin - A German Muslim leader demanded Monday a re-analysis of data which suggests that young Muslim males develop violent attitudes when they become more devout attenders at mosque.

The data, to be presented at a government conference in Berlin, was leaked in advance and was front-page news in the German media.

"It lacks an expert interpretation on the cause of the phenomenon," responded Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in remarks reported in the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. He called for another analysis of the data.

The study, based on interviews with 45,000 boys and girls aged 14 to 16, also concluded that male supremacist views and a preference for violent videos and computer games link closely with mosque attendance among the young.

The as-yet unpublished research was jointly conducted by the Federal Interior Ministry and the KFN criminology research institute in Hanover headed by Christian Pfeiffer.

The authors' interpretation was that youth developed aggressive attitudes because a majority of mosque clergy in Germany did not speak German and encouraged their congregations to practice a conservative form of Islam and to preserve their ethnic roots.

In fact, the man who performed the study, the criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, did everything not to disamuse Muslims to an extent that made him ring hollow:

Pfeiffer wrote: 'This is not a problem with Islam, but a problem with their education in Islam.'

Well, yeah, whatever.

Still, the German Muslim community doesn't see this as a reason for soul-searching or self-criticism, if it is true at all, it must be because of the alienation Muslim youths are experiencing in Germany on a daily basis, and nobody laughed or asked why that doesn't apply to youths "with a migration background" of other religious denominations as well.

As it is, we can trust that somebody somewhere will "re-interpret" the data until it meets Muslim approval soon.

---

More about Mazyek here and specifically here.

An Empty Trouser Suit Defends Free Speech

Yesterday night, chancellorette Merkel did something right and all the world have their knickers in a knot now in sycophantic amazement and praise. The Caesarian whore tabloid BILD (no link) gushed about her "bravest performance" ever since she forgot to attend an FDJ rally. But, being who she is, she couldn't HELP relativising her support of Westergaard with that ubiquitous cowardly and morally corrupt mantra about freedom of speech being lumbered with certain "responsibilities". Typically, she also chided in the same breath the pastor in Florida who intends to burn the Koran to mark the anniversary of 9/11 as "abhorrent". The old German obsession with telling Americans what to do and what not to do is still alive and thriving.

Hypocrisy runs rampant. While Westergaard's case is one of freedom of speech, Sarrazin's isn't, but about "the consequences a book may have for the author within a specifically important public law institution", as she put it in her speech. Yeah, whatever.

Reactions from the usual suspects are hardly amazing. Aiman Mazyek, secretary of the "Central Council of Muslims", and a specifically ardent defender of freedom of speech, is quoted stating that "Merkel is honouring the cartoonist who in our view trampled on our prophet and trampled on all ... blah blah yabber yabber yack yack", and the Green Party, another haven of freedom of all sorts, don't like Merkel's appearance either. "I wouldn't have done it," said Green Party floor leader Renate Künast, and "...if a chancellor also makes a speech on top of that [the Danish cartoon affair], it serves to heat up the debate." And a heated debate is something we can't have. I'll remind Künast of that as soon as another CASTOR transport is about.

But back to Merkel. It's embarrassing beyond belief. Sarrazin's book doesn't help integration, is bad for Germany's reputation in the Arabic world and hurts Muslims feelings. And to honour Kurt Westergaard does ... what? If you ask me, she makes up her shit as she goes along and thinks that a handshake for Westergaard will mollify those who found her performance in the Sarrazin case somewhat sub-optimal. Personal courage? She is under 24/7 police protection anyway. Any little Internet activist who is blogging under his real name is more endangered.

Shaking and old, freakish (I mean that in a kind way) cartoonist's hand doesn't cost much and will rake in a lot. He can always serve as the object for cheap good will and for brushing up one's image as a defender of free speech. However, a member of the establishment is different. He is a traitor to his class and must be harshly curbed and disciplined.

I mean, isn't it OBVIOUS?

Edited to add:
Benjamin Weinthal: Why is Merkel Protecting Iran's Terror Bank? -- Double standards:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is slated to honor today in the city of Potsdam, just outside of Berlin, the Danish caricaturist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad and fanatical Islam triggered violent protests across the Muslim world in 2005. Westergaard will receive the “M100” media prize for his devotion (and unwavering courage) to press freedom.

What is striking about Merkel's tribute to Westergaard's fight for the right to speak freely is her vehement opposition to shutting down the Hamburg-based European-Iranian Trade Bank (EIH), a terror entity whose revenues help prop up the Iranian regime and suppress freedom of press in Iran.

It is also disturbing that the city of Hamburg would essentially be used as the European financial center of the Islamic Republic of Iran and that the EIH has essentially been used as a conduit for Iran's missile and nuclear program. That helps explain why the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday designated the bank a terrorist entity. According to Stuart Levey, who is spearheading anti-terror measures across the globe for the U.S Treasury Department, "As one of Iran's few remaining access points to the European financial system, EIH has facilitated a tremendous volume of transactions for Iranian banks previously [blacklisted] for proliferation.

[More]

Admiration as A Compulsory Exercise

On Friday, Navid Kermani, a Muslim writer and orientalist, was expelled from the awardees' list of the annual Hessian culture award because it had transpired that he had, as a good Muslim ought to, assigned from a great height a place in the back row to the Christian faith when he had stated (among other things) that the painting "Crucifixion" by the Italian baroque painter Guido Reni, that the crucifix is a blasphemous, pornographic and idolatrous image. In the Swiss newspaper NZZ, that was, and in one of those shallow, vain, blabbering "reflections" we know him for and which go down only too well with only too many.

The state of Hesse had intended to award their 45,000 Euro prize jointly to a Jew, a Muslim, a Catholic and a Lutheran to honour the cultural achievements of the monotheistic religions.

Notoriously liberal Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz for once balked and refused to share the award with Navid Kermani, as did Peter Steinacker, former head of the Lutheran church of Hesse and Nassau.

The board then wrote to Kermani, withdrawing the award. The fourth recipient is Jewish, Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and leader of the Frankfurt Jewish congregation.

Reactions were predictable. The speaker of Germany's parliament (according to the order of precedence Germany's second-highest ranking official after President Horst Köhler) Norbert Lammert, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, Catholic, denounced the board's turnabout, saying "If this is true, they should abolish the prize altogether ... Culture is nice, tolerance too, but one can't have both without making a big effort." It ought not to be forgotten that there will be federal- and elections for the European parliament held soon and that the Iranian contacts of businessmen close to the CDU are not to be neglected, needing, indeed, big efforts.

Aiman A Mazyek, secretary of the Central Council of Muslims, who thinks that it's quite alright to make jokes about the Prophet Mohammed as long as one does not talk about his flaws, said to the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel: "How would they have felt if a Muslim had refused to meet a churchman because he did not revere the Prophet Mohammed?" The question is not how they would have FELT, but what they would have DONE, Aiman. respectively what they would have NOT done.

But that isn't the whole story. Largely ignored by the mainstream media remained the fact that Kermani hadn't been the first choice for the award. That had been the Muslim Fuat Sezgin. Sezgin had refused to accept the award together with the Jew Salomon Korn whose view of the situation in Gaza Sezgin found objectionable.

Notabene that it's quite alright for the German media that a Muslim rejects an award because of insurmountable cultural differences with a Jew, but not if a Catholic does exactly that to a Muslim.

Just who is this particular Muslim? Navid Kermani, born in Germany to Iranian parents, who gets much acclaim as both, an orientalist and as a protagonist of "moderate Islam", is married to Katajun Armipur, another orientalist and protagonist of "moderate Islam", as well as another "Germano-Iranian" (as the politically correct description goes). Armipur has gotten some fame (or is it notoriety?) when she had stated that "even thinking about replacing stoning with other punishments is a step in the right direction" when in August 2004, in the Iranian town of Neka, a 16-year-old girl was hanged because of "unchaste behaviour". Kermani and Armipur are considered models of well-assimilated, "moderate Muslims" from whom we can learn a lot and whose admiration is a compulsory exercise. Notabene, too, that media darling Kermani's Habilitationsschrift, an orgiastically acclaimed effort, was in great parts lifted fom the epochal work "Das Meer der Seele" by the peerless and long dead German orientalist Hellmut Ritter, as Gudrun Eussner substantiates in her article (sadly in German only) "Hellmut Ritter: Das Meer der Seele - und der Tümpel von Navid Kermani" (Helmut Ritter: The Sea of the Soul and Navid Kermani's Puddle).

Different from another case of multicultural enrichment, I do not think that Kermani makes up his shit arbitrarily as he goes along, but that it is cooly calculated. However, what I then said about a society that showers those "culture-enrichers" with acclaim still stands: Only in a country like Germany, with that dangerous mixture of self-hatred and denial and without any moral and ethical compass, phonies like him can become the media darlings of the unenlightened masses. In any sane society he would have been laughed out of the door ages ago.

Edited to add:
Yesterday night, when I finished this, it seemed so self-evident that I didn't say it. In broad daylight there seems something to be missing, so here it is: If anything shows that there is no "dialogue" with Muslims possible, it is this carefully calculated mixture of open insults, taqiyya and half-truths, wrapped in the smugly chic and vain harangue of an educated -- WESTERN educated -- intellectual.

How to play mind games with stupid Germans

From Monday's issue of the newspaper Die Welt, one of the assumed strongholds of conservative media in Germany, comes a stunning piece of journalism:

More Jokes about Muslims Please!
The Secretary General of the Central Council of Muslims [in Germany] wants to laugh at his fellow-Muslims more often. At WELT.de he criticizes how uptight German comedians and artists are, as soon as it's about Islam: One can very well make fun of a Muslim without hurting his dignity.

By Aiman A. Mazyek
[...]
I, too, would have liked to smile and laugh at Muslims. Is that not permitted? Who is prohibiting it? Maybe a Fatwa? A body of censors? Notabene, I am talking about laughing, not hurtful sneering at or dirty jokes about Islam. One can very well make fun of a Muslim without hurting his dignity or can't one? One can waffle about his putative flaws without besmirching his religion.
[...]
Granted, the narrow-minded and know-alls in our community will speak up and tell us in their repressed way that they don't understand a thing. They are not just suffering from a blatant deficit in humour but from their own belief as well, which they wish to live rather as stone-age Islam... the Islamic tradition knows many prominent examples, where one's own or the leg of somebody else is pulled. Thus, the Prophet Mohammed has often shown wit and mockery.
[...]

(Translation mine!)
Without doubt! And specifically at the stonings (snicker), the amputations (giggle), the beheadings (chuckle) he attended.

I mean this is so rock-hard, impregnably, intransigently, indissolubly and resolutely dumb that it leaves me speechless. Well, almost.

We have seen worldwide riots by followers of this faith and people losing their lifes over a couple of cartoons as acid as thin lemonade and as exciting as Paris Hilton's antics. We are seeing a faith, or better: a polit-cult, that promotes "honour" killings of women who decide to live like Western women, a faith whose followers perform beheadings of hostages on television, stonings, floggings, limb amputations, hangings of teenagers and children, terrorist attacks on innocent civilians, women and children and other hilariously funny gimmicks.

But what I like best is:

One can waffle about his putative flaws without besmirching his religion.

But one can not talk seriously about his real "flaws", right?

And in this country a so-called conservative newpsaper does not just print that cooly calculated and cleverly simpering drivel in all seriousness, they even sell it as an example of "enlightened" and "moderate" Islam.

Mind you, stupid is not that man, stupid are the chaps from DIE WELT who let themselves be led around like tame dancing bears at their nose rings by printing that neat little bit of propaganda.

He was yanking their chains, and ours as well. Or, to use another and even more hackneyed metaphor: He was testing the water.

I bet Mazyek, who has a Syrian father and a German mother and who is the leader of the local Free Democrats at his hometown Alsdorf, near Aachen, finds it pretty warm, cosy and agreeable.

What a Maiz!

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière [də mɛˈzi̯ɛːɐ̯] and a member of the Islam Conference, Hamideh Mohagheghi, meet the press after talks in Berlin on May 17, 2010.

A major round of government-sponsored talks with the intention to integrate Germany's Muslims into mainstream society opened at the German Historical Museum in Berlin on Monday. The Second Islam Conference, which will entail regular meetings between Muslim representatives and government officials until 2013, was opened by interior minister Thomas de Maizière, who urged a "strengthened participation of Muslims in Germany". "To strengthen the sense of belonging: That is our goal," de Maizière stated.

The conference is supposed, among other things, to draw up plans on how best to train imams and to teach the Islamic faith in schools. It would also support Muslim congregations' right to put them on a more equal footing with other religious bodies, such as churches, something which has far-reaching implications in Germany.

The First Islam Conference, which took place between 2006 and 2008 had "laid the groundwork for our dialogue," the over-optimistic minister said. However, it is making nobody happy, neither in its run-up, nor in its course, let alone in its aftermath.

"I am a bit sad that the state is marching ahead. In fact, I would have wished for the churches to lead this dialogue," de Maizière had stated at the recent oecumenic church congress (Kirchentag) at Munich. And: Christian churches need to make more efforts to come to terms with Islam, a view shared by many. "The churches are doing too little and the state is doing too little", staunchly Protestant canon- and constitutional law professor Gerhard Robbers said during the discussion. According to the law expert, Muslims are not fully recognized as German citizens. "There are too many religious policy jibes," he added, with reference to a ban on headscarves in German schools. "Such bans do not really take Muslims seriously as citizens of this country," Robbers said, and nobody laughed.

The conference includes 17 state representatives and 17 individuals and groups from the Muslim community. But only two of the country's four largest Muslim umbrella groups were at the table on Monday, namely the Turkish Islamic Union (Ditib) and the Union of Islamic Cultural Centers.

A row over the agenda and guest lists prompted Germany's Central Council of Muslims, an alliance of Sunni mosques throughout Germany, to boycott the talks, with its head, Ayyub Axel Köhler, a German convert, denouncing the conference as being "decreed by the government" and saying Muslims had been ignored. Köhler said the conference needs to include discussions about "Islamophobia" and discrimination against Muslims.

The Central Council of Muslims' general secretary, Aiman A. Mazyek, and chairman Axel Ayyub Köhler are considered moderates, while another member of the executive board, Ibrahim Faruk al-Zayad, is regarded with something almost bordering on suspicion. He heads the Islamic Community of Germany (IGD) as well, which is, by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (inland security) considerered to be the biggest organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany. Al-Zayad lost the election as chairman of the Council to Köhler, but is not without influence: His company is reportedly involved in more than 100 mosque building projects in Germany, also, he is married to a niece of Necmettin Erbakan and therefore has excellent contacts with extremist group Milli Görüs. He was as a guest at the Second Islam Conference.

Amazingly, de Maizière had already banned another group, the Islamrat, from the Conference, due to links with the same Milli Görüs. Leaders of Milli Görüs are under investigation for tax fraud and misuse of funds, plus, it has been accused of supporting a fundamentalist brand of Islam.

"These talks have been ill-fated under de Maizière," Green Party Co-chairman Cem Özdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants and paragon of Turko-German (or is it Germano-Turkish?) virtues, the first Muslim elected to chair a German party and considered entirely secular, was quoted as saying. He stressed that it ought to be aiming at full participation of Muslims in society, with all the rights and obligations that others have. "We need a road map with concrete requirements that Muslim organizations must fulfill in order to obtain recognition as a religious community," totally secular Cem said.

Another Greens leader and homosexual lobbyist, Volker Beck, accused de Maizière of having botched the conference: "The new meeting of the Islamic conference has failed before it has begun". He is particularly concerned, because the Islamic world is known to be specifically tolerant towards homosexuals.

Berlin's governing mayor and deputy head of the Social Democrats declared, in the same spirit and equally full of the endearing, if a bit misplaced, concern and care homosexual men seem to feel towards Islam, the Conference to be something of a stillborn child and de Mazière not to be sufficiently interested in it.

Monday's meeting was designed to turn some of the dialogue into practice, said de Maizière. "The working programme encompasses central questions related to the cooperation of minorities and Muslims in Germany." And: "The aim is to come up with defined tasks linked to the subjects on the discussion list."

"To turn some of the dialogue into practice" translates, of course, to: "To sell out our culture and values even more shamelessly to Muslims."

Who will, in turn, feel even more, among other things, misunderstood, excluded, hurt, insulted, overlooked, discriminated against, irgnored and marginalised. Here we have 5 percent of the population who totally dominate our discourse, mind, awareness, peace of mind and everyday life, and nobody seems to notice or to care.

De Maizière is the man who says that he would tolerate a headscarf as an expression of a religious conviction in his office, but not, should it be an "expression of a rejection or even aggressive stance targeted at what the German Ministry of the Interior stands for". The German Interior Minister, who set out and is supposed to protect our constitution, doesn't even know that this always, invariably, inevitably comes as a pair.