Perpetually Offended: Muslims Complain About Cross Symbol In Swiss Airline Adverts

By Cheradenine Zakalwe – “I posted last year about how some Swiss companies were removing the Swiss flag from their logos in order to appease Muslims. Some Islamic apologists claimed the companies were reacting to a problem that was entirely imaginary and, in reality, Muslims were not so primitive that they would be offended by the mere display of another religion’s symbols. Now we see that, in fact, they are.

The last advertising campaign of the Swiss transporter has not gone unnoticed. On large-format advertising hoards in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the Swiss flag appears accompanied by the slogan “Kreuz ist Trumpf”. This means literally “The cross is an advantage”, or “clubs are trumps” for aficionados of jass, the traditional card game. A double meaning that not everyone has been able to grasp.

The Muslims of Switzerland have reacted sharply to this image. On some forums, the internet users are indignant about the fact that Swiss is thus making reference to the “cross” and not the “Swiss cross”, reports “Der Sonntag”. The vehemence of the internet users is not a surprise to the Turkish journalist Cemil Baysal. Not long after the emotion caused in the Muslim world by the film “Innocence of Muslims”, “many Muslims feel this slogan is a provocation and an attack against Islam”.

Swiss, for its part, has given an assurance that its campaign contains no religious or political message.

Source – 20Minutes.ch via Islam verses Europe.

Flashback: Airlines With Crosses Not Allowed Over Saudi Arabia – “Swiss International Air Lines is not allowed to fly over Mecca because their planes are painted with the white Swiss cross. The airline no longer flies its cross-emblazoned planes into the country of Saudi Arabia, but the spiritual leaders of Saudi Arabia cannot ban the cross of Jesus imprinted on the hearts of Muslims who accept Jesus as Lord!” Source – uMarko.

Flashback: Egyptian Sheikh: Chevrolet’s Logo Resembles Christian Cross, Issues Fatwa Forbidding Muslims from Buying or Driving Chevys – “If the ‘Cross of Chevrolet’ had anything to do with Christianity, then General Motors wouldn’t have needed to be saved by the Federal Government. After all, the Cross is the only thing that can bail us out. No word yet on whether or not a fatwa will be issued against Mercedes-Benz for being pro-Trinitarian. In the meantime, maybe the Sheikh will recommend a Lamborghini for all Muslims. He obviously has no problem with that logo …” Read more.

The Armageddon Virus: Experts Fear Animal-To-Human Disease Could Devastate Mankind In The Next Five Years

By John Naish – “The symptoms appear suddenly with a headache, high fever, joint pain, stomach pain and vomiting.

As the illness progresses, patients can develop large areas of bruising and uncontrolled bleeding. In at least 30  per cent of cases, Crimean-Congo Viral Hemorrhagic Fever is fatal.

And so it proved this month when a 38-year-old garage owner from Glasgow, who had been to his brother’s wedding in Afghanistan, became the UK’s first confirmed victim of the tick-borne viral illness when he died at the high-security infectious disease unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital.

It is a disease widespread in domestic and wild animals in Africa and Asia — and one that has jumped the species barrier to infect humans with deadly effect.

But the unnamed man’s death was not the only time recently a foreign virus had struck in this country for the first time.

Last month, a 49-year-old man entered London’s St Thomas’ hospital with a raging fever, severe cough and desperate difficulty in breathing.

He bore all the hallmarks of the deadly Sars virus that killed nearly 1,000 people in 2003 — but blood tests quickly showed that this terrifyingly virulent infection was not Sars. Nor was it any other virus yet known to medical science.

Worse still, the gasping, sweating patient was rapidly succumbing to kidney failure, a potentially lethal complication that had never before been seen in such a case.

As medical staff quarantined their critically-ill patient, fearful questions began to mount. The stricken man had recently come from Qatar in the Middle East. What on earth had he picked up there? Had he already infected others with it?

Using the latest high-tech gene-scanning technique, scientists at the Health Protection Agency started to piece together clues from tissue samples taken from the Qatari patient, who was now hooked up to a life-support machine.

The results were extraordinary. Yes, the virus is from the same family as Sars. But its make-up is completely new. It has come not from humans, but from animals. Its closest known relatives have been found in Asiatic bats.

The investigators also discovered that the virus has already killed someone. Searches of global medical databases revealed the same mysterious virus lurking in samples taken from a 60-year-old man who had died in Saudi Arabia in July.” Read more.

UN Warns Of Looming Worldwide Food Crisis In 2013

By John Vidal, The Observer – “World grain reserves are so dangerously low that severe weather in the United States or other food-exporting countries could trigger a major hunger crisis next year, the United Nations has warned.

Failing harvests in the US, Ukraine and other countries this year have eroded reserves to their lowest level since 1974. The US, which has experienced record heatwaves and droughts in 2012, now holds in reserve a historically low 6.5% of the maize that it expects to consume in the next year, says the UN.

‘We’ve not been producing as much as we are consuming. That is why stocks are being run down. Supplies are now very tight across the world and reserves are at a very low level, leaving no room for unexpected events next year,’ said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). With food consumption exceeding the amount grown for six of the past 11 years, countries have run down reserves from an average of 107 days of consumption 10 years ago to under 74 days recently.

Prices of main food crops such as wheat and maize are now close to those that sparked riots in 25 countries in 2008. FAO figures released this week suggest that 870 million people are malnourished and the food crisis is growing in the Middle East and Africa. Wheat production this year is expected to be 5.2% below 2011, with yields of most other crops, except rice, also falling, says the UN.

The figures come as one of the world’s leading environmentalists issued a warning that the global food supply system could collapse at any point, leaving hundreds of millions more people hungry, sparking widespread riots and bringing down governments. In a shocking new assessment of the prospects of meeting food needs, Lester Brown, president of the Earth policy research centre in Washington, says that the climate is no longer reliable and the demands for food are growing so fast that a breakdown is inevitable, unless urgent action is taken.

‘Food shortages undermined earlier civilisations. We are on the same path. Each country is now fending for itself…” Read more.

Muslims Tied To Violence Directed At Jews In France

By Lori Hinnant, The Washington Times – “SARCELLES, France — The gunshots outside a synagogue and the grenade that shattered the windows of a kosher grocery spread fear into the streets – but caused little surprise.

Jews across France say anti-Semitic threats have escalated since a deadly assault on a Jewish school in the southwestern town of Toulouse this spring. The attack on the grocery store in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles and the shooting outside the synagogue in nearby Argenteuil came in late September.

In all cases, police suspect Muslim extremists. The Toulouse attacker was a Frenchman trained by Islamist terrorists.

Anti-terrorist police killed one man and arrested 11 in raids this month against an Islamist cell suspected in the Sarcelles attack.

French Jews believe the danger comes from radical messages that appeal to young Muslims in France who are unemployed, angry, alienated and looking for someone to blame.

France has struggled to address the problem head-on because of the social sensitivities.

President Francois Hollande has promised the head of an umbrella group of Muslim organizations that the government would not stigmatize all Muslims for anti-Semitic acts committed by a radical fringe.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls urged respect for all religions in a country that has Western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities. France has about 5 million Jews and 500,000 Muslims.

‘These are not terrorist networks that come from outside. They are from our neighborhoods,’ Mr. Valls said on the TF1 television network.” Read more.

Flashback: France Sees ‘Shocking Surge’ in Anti-Semitic Violence – “Pointing to recent statistics, France’s Jewish communities have expressed alarm over a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since last March’s deadly shootings of a rabbi and three schoolchildren in Toulouse. Is it a disturbing trend, or a cyclical spike?” Read more.

France: Many Refuse To Believe That Islam Is Responsible For Islamic Terrorism (Yet Where Islam Spreads Violence Follows)

By NIDRA POLLER -“PARIS. Islam, où est le problème? [literally, Islam, where is the problem?]. In the wake of the latest spate of Islamic rage operations, Yves Calvi, one of our most decent journalists, made an honest effort to squarely face the question. Though he tried as usual to include a broad range of guests, the September 24th broadcast of his political discussion program ‘Mots Croisés’ was a mismatch, with philosopher Alain Finkielkraut fending off a barrage of accusations from all sides. Accusations, of course, against us, not against Islam.

The very possibility that Islam might be a problem was evacuated early on. The majority of Muslims in France are law-abiding well-integrated members of society. The proof? French Muslims did not react violently to Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures of Muhamed. Consequently, the problem is not Islam and Islam is not a problem. The problem is the failure of French society to integrate immigrants and make them feel at home. The problem is the stigmatization of Muslim immigrants down to the third and fourth generation, relegated to ghettoes, victims of discrimination in the job market, subjected to humiliating ID controls, constantly suspected of criminality.

Clémentine Autain of the Front de Gauche [The Left Front, ed.] extended the humiliation argument to its outer limits. Those immigrants had to put up with the debate on national identity, the burqa ban, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the festering Israel-Palestinian crisis. Finkielkraut and Socialist politician Julian Dray managed to squeeze in a few words about anti-Semitism without really linking it to Islam or stemming the tide of criticism of French society.

Finkielkraut gave a subtle explanation for this studied reluctance to entertain the notion that Islam in and of itself might be a problem by citing the case of his colleague Robert Redeker, a philosophy professor who has been in hiding and under police protection since he published an unvarnished reflection on Islam in the Figaro daily in September 2006.

Asked for reactions to a proposed Qatari investment of 50 million euros in the banlieues (suburbs), Calvi’s guests were almost unanimously opposed to what seems like foreign interference in domestic affairs. But, argued Rama Yade, who served as Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in the Sarkozy government, we have to ask why Qatar would step in. It’s because we have neglected the banlieues. Aside from the fact that this is not true, it does not explain the warlike behavior that actually provokes the question Islam, where is the problem?

Latifa ibn Ziaten, the bereaved mother of the first parachutist killed by Mohamed Merah [the French-Algerian terrorist who murdered four men and three children in Toulouse in March of this year, ed.], contends that her son Imad is a war casualty, targeted and killed solely because he was in the service. The Defense Department refuses, on the grounds that he was not on duty when he was shot. Merah lured Imad into an ambush by pretending he was interested in buying the scooter the parachutist had advertised online. Merah’s ‘home movie’ shows Imad, who refused the order to kneel, standing upright and looking his killer in the eyes.

Calvi ran an excerpt of a TV interview of the soft-spoken dignified grieving mother. Tears flow as she tells how she found the courage one day to visit the neighborhood where Merah grew up. She came upon a group of youths and asked them if they knew Mohamed Merah. They slapped their thighs and high fived. Merah? He’s a hero, he’s a shahid [Islamic martyr. ed.], he’s our model. When she told them Merah killed her son, the boys

Israel: Local Cleric Favors Beating Women As Radical Islamic Revolution Closes In On Israeli Arabs

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu – “The radical Islamic Revolution is encroaching on Israeli cities and scares none other than secular Arabs in the ‘Triangle’ area near Netanya.

Arabs with Israeli citizenship in the city of Tira fear it will become a second Umm el Fahm, the home of the radical Islamic Movement’s northern branch and located between Afula and the Mediterranean Coast north of Netanya.

Many, if not most, of Tira Arabs are considered ‘liberal secularists,’ but Army Radio reported Sunday that they are frightened by the takeover of several schools by supporters of the Islamic Movement.

Islamic flags have been flying over some schools, and residents said that a Muslim cleric, local Islamic Movement leader Abdel Rahman Kishua, preached in a local mosque in favor of beating women. Despite vocal opposition, the clerics said, ‘Islamic law allows it.’

Speaking from Mecca, where he is visiting, Kishua denied a charge that he beat a woman in Tira and that he preached violence.

The mayor of Tira, Maamon Abdelchai, denied that radical Psalmists are taking over the city and instead praised them for helping out Arab residents who are facing economic difficulties.

The tactic of winning support of poorer people by supplying them with social and educational needs has been highly successful in the Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist organizations. Hizbullah has effectively become the de facto government in southern Lebanon after years of taking care of the Shi’ite Muslim population. ” Source – INN.

Flashback: Egyptian Cleric: Islam Teaches A Man To Beat His Wife So That She’ll Treat Him With Kindness, Respect, And Know He Is Superior – “Islam instructs a man to beat his wife as a last resort before divorce, so that she will mend her ways, treat him with kindness and respect, and know that her husband has a higher status than her… A good woman, even if beaten by her husband, puts her hand in his and says: ‘I will not rest until you are pleased with me.’ This [is] how the Prophet Mohammed taught his women to be.” Read more.