Islamic Fundamentalists Set to Force Sharia Law on Egypt After Election Victory, Rich Egyptians Consider Fleeing Country

“Muslim hardliners are set to push for strict religious laws in Egypt after their strong showing in the country’s elections.

A spokesman for an ultra-conservative Islamist party said that he was hoping to impose Sharia law on Egypt…

Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Salafists appear to have taken a majority of seats in the first round of the vote.

If this trend is confirmed, it would give the religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key ally of the West.

Spokesman Yousseri Hamad says the Salafi Nour party expects to get 30 per cent of the vote.

The showing would put them in a strong position to influence policy, although it’s unclear how much power the new parliament will have with the ruling generals still in power.

Protests are still raging in the iconic Tahrir Square in an attempt to force the military to get out of politics…

The Nour Party is the main political arm of the hard-line Salafi movement, which unlike the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood is a new player on Egypt’s political scene.

Inspired by the Saudi-style Wahhabi school of thought, Salafists have long shunned the concept of democracy, saying it allows man’s law to override God’s.

But they formed parties and entered politics after Hosni Mubarak’s fall in order to make sure Sharia law is an integral part of Egypt’s new constitution.” Read more.

Rich Egyptians weigh emigration as Islamists surge – “For decades, Egypt’s Westernised elite kept the country’s growing religosity at arm’s length, but a projected Islamist surge in the first post-revolution polls has driven many to think of moving abroad. Sporting the latest fashions and mingling in upmarket country clubs, Egypt’s rich fear a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood and hardline Salafis in the first phase of parliamentary elections presages change ahead. ‘I hope they don’t impose the veil and ban women from driving like in Saudi Arabia,’ said coquettish fifty-something Naglaa Fahmi from her gym in the leafy neighbourhood of Zamalek.” Read more.

Iraq: Muslim Mob Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ Attacks, Ransacks, Burns Christian-Owned Shops and Hotels

Robert Spencer- “I just received this email from a reader in Iraq:

Subject: Muslims attacked our liquor shops, salons, hotels

Message: Hello, I’m an Assyrian in Iraq. Today after Friday prayers, Muslim Kurds in Zakho (near Dohuk) attacked and besieged liquor shops, salons, hotels, massages that are owned by Christians. The security didn’t do anything and the rampage has continued til now! You won’t see this news in the media.

Indeed not. But you will see it at Jihad Watch.

UPDATE 1:23PM PST: I just received this new message from the same man on the scene in Iraq:

Thank you so much for putting the news out there, Robert.

The attacks haven’t stopped, and I just go the word that they are ATTACKING a Catholic Diocesan office.

The security is standing still and watching as I am writing this to you.

Christian homes are being fired upon as well.

And I just learned that they’re starting to attack small villages on the outskirts of the town as well. This could be a major news as it unfolds.

It seems to me that it already is.” – Source – Jihad Watch.

Muslims in Pakistan Beat, Shoot at Christians During Land Grab

“LAHORE, Pakistan, December 1 (CDN) — In an attempted land-grab in southern Punjab Province, police and cohorts of a retired military official beat two Christian women and shot at Christians who came to help them on Friday (Nov. 25), area Christians told Compass.

About eight police officials led by Sub-Inspector Muhammad Arif of Kot Sarwar Shaheed police station, along with armed associates of a retired senior military officer, Air Marshal Maqbool Shah, arrived at the fields of Nazeer Masih in the Kot Addu area and ordered the six or seven women working there to leave, said area Christian rights advocate Waseem Shakir. The women included Nazeer’s wife, Martha Bibi, and daughter-in-law, Nasreen Bibi.

The men told the workers that they had come to take possession of the 12.5 acres that Nazeer Masih owns in Mauza Sadiqabad area of Muzaffargarh district, which they claimed had now been allotted by the Revenue Department to the Pakistan Army for distribution among retired officials.

Martha Bibi told Compass the women were still in shock.

‘We were cultivating chickpeas when the Muslims arrived at our fields,’ she said. ‘They asked us to leave everything and never return because it was their land now. [We said] we have been cultivating the land since 1976, how could we just leave? This angered them, and they attacked us. They pulled away our headscarves from our heads and started hitting us indiscriminately with clubs and punches.’

About 800 Christians have lived in the Mauza Sadiqabad and Mauza Azizabad areas of Muzaffargarh district for the last 50 years, rights advocate Shakir told Compass by phone.

‘The Christians are settled on 10,000 acres of land which they made cultivable over the years,’ he said. ‘The land is actually owned by the government, but the Christians have been given ownership of the properties, and the record to this effect is present with the local revenue department.’

In the last few years Muslims have made several attempts to seize the land from the Christians, usually succeeding because Christians are a marginalized minority, while Muslims carry out illegal activities with impunity and official blessing, Shakir said.” Read more.

Christians Targeted During Christmas: ‘It’s Time for Christians in the United States to Help in Protecting Their Brothers and Sisters Overseas’

By Jim Kouri – “As Americans prepare to celebrate the Christmas holiday, many are unaware that religious observances are practically a luxury when compared with nations that continue to oppress, persecute and even kill followers of Jesus Christ, according to evangelical Christian leaders.

Christians in several countries find it difficult to practice even the fundamentals of their faith. To openly celebrate the birth of the man they believe is their Savior could be nothing short of a death sentence.

For example, officials in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continue see Christianity as a threat to their philosophy of state control. While North Korean authorities deny imprisoning, torturing and killing Christians — in the same way they denied working on a nuclear weapon — Christians living North Korea have suffered government-sanctioned persecution since the brutal communist regime came to power.

A Christian human-rights group — Open Doors — reports that North Korea is number one on its annual World Watch List (WWL), which ‘ranks countries by the intensity of persecution that Christians face for actively pursuing their faith.’ However, North Korea is not the only country in which the Christian population are mistreated, abused and killed on a daily basis.

Syriac Christians have lived in the Muslim-dominated region for centuries and are but a small minority in countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Turkey. The protest march was organized in the wake of several violent attacks against the Christian community in Iraq, a segment of the population that fell from about 1.5 million to only 400,000 over the past decade.

As previously reported by the Law Enforcement Examiner, at least 52 Iraqi Christians were killed and over 60 injured in a terrorist inspired bloodbath at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Deliverance Catholic Church. U.S. special forces troops, together with Iraqi security forces, launched a rescue operation to free as many of the Christians being held hostage by their terrorist captors as possible.

The Al Qaeda-linked ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ claimed responsibility and threatened to ‘exterminate Iraqi Christians.’ This shadowy jihad terror network justified the savagery on religious grounds, claiming that the church was an ‘obscene nest of the polytheists [infidels]’ and a ‘base for their struggle against the religion of Islam.’

The Muslim Brotherhood Is Rising and Appeasement Is Not an Option

By Rabbi Abraham Cooper – “How would the media and politicians react if 5,000 ‘activists’ chanted ‘death to Jews’ outside a City Hall in your community?

How would European religious leaders react if neo-Nazis packed the Cologne Cathedral or Notre Dame to threaten Muslims, Jews and gays?

We all know the answer: Loud and sustained protests of ‘Not on our Watch’…

But last Friday, Egypt’s ascendant Muslim Brotherhood provided a foretaste of their definition religious tolerance during a rally convened at Cairo’s most prominent mosques. 5,000 people joined a rally where the chant ‘one day we shall kill all the Jews’ echoed time and again along with ‘Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Judgment Day is coming.’

The world’s reaction? So far–stone cold silence. Not from the media, nor Interfaith talking heads, not the EU, and as far as we know nothing from the Obama administration.

If world leaders lacked the courage to protest those genocidal rants over the weekend, they are unlikely to utter a word now that Tuesday’s first round of democratic elections gives every indication that the next Egyptian government will be lead by the very same Muslim Brotherhood.

Unfortunately, weakness and wishful thinking seem to be the twin pillars of current U.S. and Western European thinking about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, much as it was about Hitler’s Nazi Party during the pre-World War II era of European appeasement.

Formed in the late 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood—an Egyptian organization with global affiliates in North Africa, Hamas-run Gaza, and even Europe and the U.S.—consistently opposed thedemocratic process until a few years ago when it cynically decided that “one man, one vote, one time” could be its ticket to power.

With an estimated 40% of the vote in this week’s Egyptian parliamentary elections—the first since the overthrow of the 30-year authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak—the Muslim Brotherhood now opportunistically denies for political advantage its longstanding opposition toward democracy and the rights of Egypt’s women and Coptic Christians.

But about one thing it’s unwaveringly consistent: its

‘Disaster’: Unusual Drought Triggers Alarm Across Balkans

By AMER COHADZIC and MARKO DROBNJAKOVIC – “BEZDAN, Serbia (AP) — The waters of the mighty Danube are so low that dozens of cargo ships are stuck, stranded in ghostly fog or wedged into sand banks on what is normally one of eastern Europe’s busiest transport routes.

A lack of rain has triggered the worst drought in decades for this time of year, dropping river levels to record lows and sounding an alarm in parts of central and eastern Europe.

Power supplies are running low in Serbia, drinking water shortages have hit Bosnia, and crop production is in jeopardy in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. The Czech Republic is at its driest since records began in 1775.

Meteorologists say they are not sure why the region has had far less rain than average since August — but they don’t see any more coming quickly. That is bad news for shipping companies that are already reporting big losses.

‘This is a disaster,’ said Branko Savic, the manager of a privately owned Danube shipping company in Serbia that he says is operating at only a third of its capacity. ‘Traffic on the Danube is practically nonexistent. . . We are in dire need of enormous amounts of water, rain, or melting snow in order to better the situation.’

About 80 big cargo ships are stranded at the Serbia-Hungary border on the Danube, Europe’s second largest river, which winds 2,860-kilometer (1,777-mile) from Germany, passing through eight countries before flowing into the Black Sea.

‘In my many years of experience as a boat captain, I don’t remember a drought as harsh as this one,’ said Anton Balasz, whose ship is among those stuck where exposed sand banks are preventing boats from passing.” Read more.

New Icelandic Volcano Eruption Could Have Global Impact

By Jane O’Brien – “Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland’s largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century.

Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland’s east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean.

‘There has been a great deal of seismic activity,’ says Ford Cochran, the National Geographic’s expert on Iceland.

There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma.

‘And that certainly suggests an eruption may be imminent.’

Scientists in Iceland have been closely monitoring the area since 9 July, when there appears to have been some sort of disturbance that may have been a small eruption.

Eruption ‘long overdue’?

Even that caused significant flooding, washing away a bridge across the country’s main highway and blocking the only link to other parts of the island for several days.

‘The 9 July event seems to mark the beginning of a new period of unrest for Katla, the fourth we know in the last half century,’ says Professor Pall Einarsson, who has been studying volcanoes for 40 years and works at the Iceland University Institute of Earth Sciences.

‘The possibility that it may include a larger eruption cannot be excluded,’ he continues. ‘Katla is a very active and versatile volcano. It has a long history of large eruptions, some of which have caused considerable damage.’

The last major eruption occurred in 1918 and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept into the ocean by the resulting floods.” Read more.