Salafi and Secular Intellectuals Exchange Insults and Nearly Come to Blows on Egyptian TV | Al-Kahera Wal-Nas TV (Egypt) - March 5-6, 2013

Egypt’s Salafists Deploy Virulent Rhetoric, Accuse Liberals of Being Foreign Agents

BIKYA MASR: CAIRO: On Friday, Mohamed Amr watched as ultra-conservative Salafists converged on Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square. Their deafening chants of “Islamic state” resounding throughout downtown Cairo. For him, a liberal activist wounded in the January 2011 uprising that ousted the country’s long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, it was frustrating.

“I am very worried about the future of the country and how the Salafists are trying to accuse liberals and those of us who fought and bled for change as foreigners in our own country,” he told Bikyamasr.com.

“It is a sad time for the Egyptian revolution. It might be dead and what we are seeing is something very scary,” the former member of the April 6 Youth Movement added.

Making matters worse for the left is the growing anti-liberal sentiment growing on the streets and in mosques.

On Friday, as thousands of puritan Salafists gathered in Tahrir Square to demand that the new constitution for Egypt be an Islamic one, member of al-Gama’a Islamiya Sheikh Mohamed el-Soghir accused secular and liberal activists of pushing a Western agenda.

“Our Prophet [Mohamed] fought the infidels of Mecca, who are now represented by the Liberals,” said El-Soghir in comments published by local media. » | Yussif Ibrahim | Sunday, November 11, 2012

Cause and Consequence: Deathblow in the Netherlands
CANADA FREE PRESS: Last week, the Dutch police raided the home of Gregorius Nekschot (a pseudonym meaning “Gregory Deathblow”). Mr. Nekschot makes rude and often sexually explicit cartoons that poke fun at the multicultural society and at religious people, especially Muslims. The police confiscated his computer and a number of drawings. The cartoonist was also arrested and jailed for 36 hours but has meanwhile been released until his court case is due.

“Gregory Deathblow” – the first name refers to Pope Gregory IX who established the Papal Inquisition – hides behind an alias. The cartoonist was a collaborator of the late Dutch film director Theo van Gogh. He made drawings for Mr. van Gogh’s website until it ceased publication in 2004, after its owner was assassinated by a fanatic Muslim. 



The police harrassment of Mr. Nekschot follows a 2005 “islamophobia” complaint by Abdul Jabbar van de Ven, a Dutchman who converted to Islam and subsequently became an imam. This was the same Abdul Jabbar van de Ven who, three weeks after Mr. van Gogh’s assassination, told Dutch television that he had felt happiness when he heard of the murder and that he hoped that anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders would soon die, too. Mr. Nekschot subsequently made a cartoon of the imam, depicting him with sticks pricking out his eyes. 



It is indicative of the current situation in the Netherlands that the authorities have not pursued the threatening imam, but arrested the cartoonist following a complaint from that same imam. It took them three years to do so because, as Ernst Hirsch Ballin, the Dutch minister of Justice, a Christian-Democrat, explained last week, it took the police three years to discover the cartoonist’s real identity. He will now be charged with the hate speech crime of drawing cartoons of “an insulting and/or discriminating nature.” 



Mr. Nekschot’s reaction to his arrest, however, was equally indicative. He attacked… the Christians. In an interview in Monday’s newspaper Sp!ts he said: “I think it is urgent that we democratically limit the influence of parties such as the Christian Democrat Party, the Christian Union and other religiously inspired parties. These parties are disastrous in all respects.” 



Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war between Christians, secularists and Muslims. Both the secularists and the Christians feel threatened by radical Islam. Anti-religious secularists hold that Islam is dangerous for one reason only, namely that, like Christianity, it is a religion. They fail to grasp that Islam, rather than being a transcendental religion, resembles a totalitarian political ideology in the guise of a religion. It aims to impose Islamic law on everyone, including non-Muslims. Christian values, on the contrary, have long ceased to define society in the Netherlands. Unlike America, Western Europe is a post-Christian society with secularism as its state ideology. The secularists have created a religious vacuum in the heart of European society – which Islam is filling. Cause and Consequence: Deathblow in the Netherlands: Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war between Christians, secularists and Muslims >>> By Paul Belien | May 22, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Canada)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback – Canada)