There would have been a majority for a legal ban on full-face veils at schools and universities in the state. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) are calling for such a ban. The AfD has already submitted a corresponding bill. Large parts of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) are also against face veils at universities. The Greens, however, brought down the plans in the parliamentary coalition.They are against too many bans and want to uphold a liberal society, said parliamentary group leader Eka von Kalben.

The University of Kiel had sent a call for help to parliament. Katharina K., a German convert with contacts in the Salafist circles, showed up for a lecture in a nikab and was subsequently excluded from her studies. Now she wants to sue. In view of this situation, CDU Education Minister Karin Prien urgently appealed to parliament to create a legal basis for this. Otherwise, she said, such state intervention in a fundamental right – the wearer invokes freedom of religion – could not be sustained in the foreseeable future.

CDU Prime Minister Daniel Günther also immediately came out in favour. Politicians must ask themselves whether, similar to the rejection of anti-Semitism, they want to “define a social norm” that they will not tolerate the nikab and burqa as symbols of Salafism, lack of freedom and the oppression of women in schools and universities, Prien said in the state parliament on Wednesday.Her appeal fell on deaf ears. The Greens opposed a ban on veiling. There are also women who wear the nikab voluntarily, said Eka von Kalben. Politics does not have to make theological interpretations, argued her Green parliamentary colleague Lasse Petersdotter. Moreover, oppressed Muslim women in particular should not be excluded from education, and should rather be offered help at universities. And there was only one case of a female student in the country. He described the quick reaction of the Minister of Education and the Prime Minister to this as ill-considered and unsovereign. “Banning, pushing away, excluding and looking the other way does not solve problems,” Petersdotter said. “Our strategy against Salafism must be more meaningful than simple clothing bans.” A “ban on access to state educational institutions” also has no “deradicalising effect”.

SPD opposition leader Ralf Stegner did not want to accept this. He said that it was very much the task of politics to create a legal framework – and also to check whether a full-face veil was really a religious or not much more a political symbol.Even in the ranks of the CDU and FDP, their ministers and head of government Daniel Günther’s faces stiffened due to the unambiguous position of the Green parliamentary group. The CDU education politician Tobias Loose emphasised that there is a threat of further cases of full-face veils at schools in the state. There is already one concrete case. In Lower Saxony, the red-green government had issued a ban because of a case at the University of Osnabrück.

“We have to stand up for this and set limits,” emphasised Christopher Vogt, head of the FDP parliamentary group. University and school are places of enlightenment. Wearing a burqa or a nikab, on the other hand, is not an expression of cosmopolitanism, but above all a symbol of the oppression of women. “We want to make progress in gender equality, not regress,” said Vogt. Full-face veils would be where his liberality would end. The FDP therefore wants to let universities decide on a ban on full-face veils in the law.

In fact, the CDU/CSU and the Liberals are coming under considerable pressure from their members because of the dispute. There is talk of angry emails to the party leaders. The Greens were prepared to make only one compromise on Wednesday: there is to be a “major hearing” of experts on the issue in the state parliament.

AfD member of parliament Frank Brodehl sharply criticised the governing coalition for this ” wait-and-see” attitude. “CDU and FDP are abandoning the university. And that’s just to keep the coalition in good terms.” The hearing will not lead to any new insights, all the facts are available.In Bavaria, for example, a law like the one proposed by the AfD has long been in force. The hearing, according to the motto “If you don’t know any other way, form a research group”, should therefore only postpone a decision on the issue of face veils.”This may be in the interest of the survival of the coalition with the Greens, but it is definitely not in the interest of the universities in our country,” said Frank Brodehl. The teaching and examination business there, he said, does not tolerate any veiling of the students. And that is why the state parliament must also give them the possibility to ban it in a legally secure way.

https://www.ln-online.de/Nachrichten/Norddeutschland/Landtag-Gruene-blockieren-Schleier-Verbot-in-Schulen-und-Unis?fbclid=IwAR2_4Rl1WVbnvWAx7D3npygovi74DYbr3wdjpNEaZEFARToK3_QMwWVBdoA

The chairman of the Association of German Criminal Police Officers (BDK), Sebastian Fiedler, warns against attacks on women where the motive is an alleged violation of honour. “So-called honour killings are a phenomenon that has concerned us for many years,” Fiedler told the newspaper WELT AM SONNTAG. “Prevention and intervention are a major challenge in this milieu,” he said. The ” too exaggerated sense of honour” that can be seen in certain milieus “cannot be reconciled with our Basic Law”, he said.

On Thursday, the trial of Hashem N. started in Aschaffenburg (tweet above) – he allegedly killed his daughter because of her lifestyle and her relationship with a man. Three other similar trials are currently underway in Germany.

According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), about 300 women are killed in Germany every year – the figure for men is lower every year. New criminological research has introduced the term “femicide” for this. About one third of all murders that the Federal Criminal Police Office lists in its statistics under “intimate partner violence” are committed by men who do not have a German passport. Yet the proportion of foreigners in this country is only a good seven percent.

https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article227756919/Polizeigewerkschaft-Ehrenmorde-besorgen-uns-seit-Jahren.html

By Ethel C. Fenig

In a closely contested vote yesterday in officially neutral Switzerland, voters narrowly (51.21%) approved a bill stating, “no one shall cover their face in public” and “no one is permitted to force someone to cover their face based on their gender.” 

No, no, no — the neutral Swiss didn’t vote against face masks to keep the Wuhan virus from spreading; although not explicitly stated this law forbids Muslim women in Switzerland from covering their faces, with only eye peepholes or even slightly less restrictive face coverings, as is common in various degrees in most Muslim countries.  France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark have similar so-called burka ban laws.

While reporters at Al Jazeera, the Muslim media conglomerate, whined discrimination about this law, labeling it anti Muslim, they are quite silent about similar laws which force women, citizens and tourists, alike to cover up in Muslim dominated countries.  For instance, in Iran, according to Trip Savvy: 

If you’re traveling specifically to Iran, you will want to consult the dress code information from the website Iranian Visa. The Islamic dress code for women takes effect when your airplane crosses into Iranian airspace, according to the site.

Islamic codes of behavior and dress are strictly enforced. In a public place, women must cover their heads with a headscarf, wear a long skirt or loose trousers, and a long-sleeved tunic or coat that reaches to the knee.

Diverse, pluralistic and multi-cultural countries such as the United States or Israel do not have such clothing restrictions aimed at any specific religious or ethnic group.

Officially neutral, Switzerland doesn’t approve of minarets on mosques, Muslim buildings of worship, either; so much so they passed a law forbidding them over 11 years ago.

However, once again, opposing laws and customs exist in Muslim dominated countries as harsher restrictions against (Christian) churches and much harsher restrictions, often to the point of totally forbidden, against (Jewish) synagogues are the norm there.

Once again, diverse, pluralistic and multi-cultural countries such as the United States or Israel have no such restrictions on any religious places of worship; indeed in the US religious buildings are tax exempt and therefore do not pay property taxes.

Ironically, very few Muslim women in Switzerland, either residents or tourists, cover their faces.  So, why are these laws being passed?  Eleven years ago, the British Guardian speculated

A handful of recent applications for building permits for minarets in Switzerland, the no campaigners said, was proof to many Swiss “of the next step in the strategy of Islamification of our country. The fear is great that the minarets will be followed by the calls to prayer of the muezzin … sharia is gaining in importance in Switzerland and in Europe. That means honour killings, forced marriages, circumcision, wearing the burka, ignoring school rules, and even stoning.”

The prohibition also found substantial support on the left and among secularists worried about the status of women in Islamic cultures. Prominent feminists attacked minarets as male power symbols, deplored the oppression of Muslim women, and urged a vote for the ban.

Since then, many more Muslims have immigrated to Europe; many of these issues — and more — happened and tensions over the newcomers and their failure to integrate remains high. 

So, ladies, follow the dress law wherever you go.  Men too.  Or else!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/the_neutral_swiss_vote_yes_to_a_burqa_ban.html

In sharp contrast to last year’s reports about Hungary’s emergency legislation during the first wave of the coronavirus epidemic, the German government’s proposal to extend the state of emergency indefinitely has been announced without any negative commentary or condemnation from the guardians of global democracy.

The German government, made up of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), the Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), has proposed to change the so-called “Infection Protection Act”, and extend the special powers of the German federal government for an unlimited period, which transfers a number of key powers of the parliament to the executive government, and creates a legal basis for the government to suspend a number of fundamental rights enshrined in Germany’s constitution, such as curtailing freedom of assembly.

For those demanding a medical or scientific justification for granting such sweeping powers to a democratic government, there is going to be a very long wait though, as the deadline for the scientific report that would explain the need for such legal measures is set for March 31, 2022 — more than a year from now.

Furthermore, it is not medical authorities or expert-led panels who will determine what is an “epidemic of national proportions”, which is the legal basis for the current emergency powers. The task falls on members of the Bundestag; they are the ones who will decide on when an epidemic situation warrant special powers for the government. The Bundestag will simply need to have a vote every three months to extend these emergency powers.

The new amendment to the Infection Protection Act also adds further criteria to the existing ones that could be taken into account when renewing the state of emergency, such as the progress of vaccination, or R-rates. This will allow the government to extend or deepen its own emergency powers by the new criteria should the old ones seem insufficient to support such a decision.

The German mainstream media had found nothing objectionable in the radical proposals, and even among opposition politicians there were few and far between to criticize the Merkel government’s proposal. Only the opposition FDP MP Wolfgang Kubicki had dared to declare that “Corona is not keeping us in lockdown, but this federal government because it has been unable to provide sufficient masks, sufficient rapid tests and sufficient vaccine for months”.

The ease by which rules governing basic civic liberties are changed under Angela Merkel’s government are well in line with other measures, such as a sharp crackdown on German opposition parties, or the lack of concern about rising anti-semitic attacks from left-wing groups. However, it is the astonishing hypocrisy of the world’s mainstream media and human rights NGOs in their sharply contrasting reactions to health emergency laws in Germany and those recently adopted by the Hungarian government that truly unmask the double-standards by which left-wing opinion-making elites operate.

When the Hungarian Parliament voted for a state of emergency during the first wave in 2020,  the media and human rights industry reacted with outrage and called for international condemnation. One well-funded political pressure-group pretending to be a human rights platform wrote that “the act resembles the German Enabling Act of 1933, the infamous law that created the legal basis for Nazi rule under the Weimar Constitution”.

“The emergency bill also allows Orban to prevent public demonstrations and mitigate criticism by political opponents and the media. He will be the one to decide when the current emergency state is over,” claimedthe left-wing media outlet CNBC.

“Hungary’s state of emergency law is a ‘blank cheque’ to Orban”, wrote another media outlet in its headlines.

According to the Council of Europe human rights chief, Dunja Mijatović, the Hungarian act “would grant sweeping powers to the government to rule by decree without a clear cut-off date and safeguards”.

“Orban granted indefinite ‘authoritarian’ power”, claimed a staunch anti-Orbán English language media outlet.

Even Germany’s minister for European affairs, Michael Roth, who has currently voiced no opposition to Germany’s new radical rule-changes, warned in relation to last year’s Hungarian state of emergency that “Covid-19 requires adequate responses. But they must not endanger rule of law, disempower democratic institutions or put fundamental rights at risk. We need to overcome this together, not rule through decrees.”

Even after all the above critics were proven wrong and the state of emergency was lifted in Hungary, the political lobby group Human Rights Watch stlll saw a conspiracy: “Following international outrage, the Hungarian government’s announcement to revoke the rule-by-decree and state of emergency law this week at first glance seems a positive step. But don’t let Orban’s authoritarian regime fool you.”

As the German government is about to enter uncharted territories by granting itself emergency powers for an unlimited period based on rather arbitrary criteria, the world’s media is unconcerned, and focuses rather on its customary Orbán-bashing in relation to the EPP scandal unabated. At the same time, the only ones benefiting from the global anti-Orbán smear campaign are the Europhile Hungarian left, and all those powers that are opposed to the Hungarian government’s Christian-conservative vision of Europe and a union of empowered and sovereign nation-states.

What is clear is that any measure introduced by Angela Merkel’s government becomes immediately normative for servile Western political decision-makers and those of the so-called journalist class all while the systematic campaign of disinformation against Hungary’s conservatives charges ahead with unbroken vigor.

https://rmx.news/article/article/world-media-silent-as-german-government-to-extend-state-of-emergency-indefinitely

Six years after its gruesome assault on the Yazidi minority in Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) continues to sell Yazidi captives online on what is known as the “deep web” of criminal activities. A number of such sales have taken place in Turkey, indicating that IS militants are still able to take shelter in the country.

Most recently, a 7-year-old Yazidi girl was rescued by police posing as buyers. According to Turkish journalist Hale Gonultas, who closely follows the fate of IS captives, police took action after an advertisement in Kurdish and Arabic, complete with the girl’s picture, appeared online Feb. 23. Posing as relatives of the child, the police made the highest bid and were able to detect the address of the advertiser. They raided a home in Ankara’s Kecioren district the following day and rescued the girl.

According to the official account of the incident, police and intelligence services established that a suspect, who was a ranking member of IS in Mosul, Iraq, had made it to Ankara, bringing along a Yazidi child as “war booty.” The man, identified only as S.O., was detained along with a suspected accomplice.

After such online “auctions,” the captives are usually delivered via “safe middlemen” who are typically criminals involved in the trafficking of drugs, arms and humans. The rescued girl remains in state care in Ankara, as Iraqi commissions dealing with missing Yazidis are working to trace her family.

In July 2020, a 24-year-old Yazidi woman, held captive in Ankara’s Sincan district, was rescued by relatives in Australia who “bought” her in an online sale. According to Gonultas, the Yazidi woman’s captor — a Turkmen IS member from Mosul — had bought her from an online slave market in 2018. The man, who moved frequently between Iraq and Turkey, kept a home in Sincan with his two wives, four children and the Yazidi woman. 

Another Yazidi woman was rescued in Ankara in October 2019. She was held by a senior Iraqi Turkmen member of IS, who was so audacious as to rent an apartment near a police station in Kecioren. The young woman, abducted as a 14-year-old in 2014, lived with the family of the IS militant and had a baby as a product of rape. The man, who had been an IS emir in Tal Afar, Iraq, traveled frequently to Iraq, which allowed the woman’s brother to track him down to Ankara. The brother managed to take a picture of his sister and her captor, seizing a rare moment the man took the woman out, and went to the police. Eventually, the woman was rescued. The authorities, however, took no legal action against her captor as she did not file a complaint against him, although they had enough findings to pursue a criminal case for abduction and rape.

Another rescue saga unfolded in Kirsehir, a city not far from Ankara, in 2017, when an Iraqi Turkmen made an unsuccessful attempt to register two children as his own at a police bureau dealing with refugees. The two siblings were taken into state care, while their pictures were sent to Iraqi centers dealing with missing Yazidis. This eventually brought their adult sister to Kirsehir — a woman who herself had been an IS captive before relatives bailed her out. Her parents, husband, son and a sibling were also missing. The woman faced legal barriers in claiming her siblings in Kirsehir, including having to provide DNA tests and proof that their parents were dead. Ultimately, the two children, ages 9 and 11, were handed over to Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani when he visited Ankara in September.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/originals/2021/03/turkey-syria-yazidi-captives-speak-of-isis-ongoing-activity.html?fbclid=IwAR1-JO2FooLVWNwSUNpGFBBQ95EIMJ6gLfvbsmDlgcHJlY03NoIS-Ho8H5U

Two men convicted of a gang rape in Freiburg must stand trial for an alleged further gang rape. The two Syrians, together with a third, also Syrian, accused, allegedly gang-raped a then 19-year-old woman in September 2017, the Freiburg Regional Court announced on Thursday. The scene of the crime was the Freiburg flat of one of the accused. The trial is scheduled to begin on March the 11th. Eleven days of court sessions are scheduled.The two men, aged 24 and 25, who have already been convicted, have been in pre-trial detention since October 2018 for the gang rape in a bush outside a Freiburg disco. Last July, they were sentenced to several years in prison for this. However, the sentences are not yet final, as the Federal Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the appeals of the two men. The third accused was so far at large, as the court informed.In addition to rape, the men are accused of other offences in the new trial. Among other things, the 24-year-old has to answer for dangerous bodily harm, for an attempted sexual assault and an exhibitionistic offence. The 25-year-old is alleged to have committed drug offences.The gang rape at the Hans-Bunte-Areal in Freiburg in mid-October 2018 had caused great horror. Eleven men were accused in the subsequent trial, all but one of them refugees.

https://www.welt.de/regionales/baden-wuerttemberg/article227652835/Gruppenvergewaltigung-Taeter-wegen-weiterer-Tat-angeklagt.html?cid=socialmedia.facebook.shared.web&fbclid=IwAR1WnndRV5X0Ww2-kxUGDMUluSl9yKXnWNvgQFb3cZ3fu58lrR9qAKFRZuI

She was supposed to receive the “Peace Prize” at the weekend, but now the date has been postponed.

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” is a Christian guiding principle according to Matthew chapter 25, verse 35. The commandment to love one’s neighbour applied to one’s brethren in the faith, not to all the people of that time. Today, it is usually applied to all conceivable nearest and nearest ones on the continents, no longer only to the people in the neighbourhood.

Monastic charity for all? But not for certain Christians? I could not believe my eyes when I had to read such sentences from a convent headmistress, which she gave to the newspaper Badische Zeitung in an interview. For example, a Christian who was persecuted and came to Germany via France was not granted monastery asylum by the kind woman. She had him sent away at the risk that France would not grant asylum because he had also entered France via a safe third country.

But there are open arms for Muslims who entered via Hungary and did not apply for asylum there. Also not receiving asylum or any other residence status here and therefore had to go back: “In 2016, a young man from Iraq and a young German woman who was supporting the man stood in front of the monastery door. He was desperate because he was to be deported to Hungary, where he had entered the EU for the first time …”, the abbess justified the way she opened her monastery to save the man from being “deported” to Hungary. Which is not true. No one is deported from Germany, but returned in more comfort than it was to arrive. He felt badly treated in Hungary, but there is still Austria between Hungary and Germany. Presumably he wanted to come here because of his bride or for some other reason. However, the immigration and asylum law is not yet a matter of wishful thinking.

This migrant’s family was surrounded by IS in Mosul, the Muslim man argues. His brother was killed there. What happened to the family was not mentioned in the interview. Mosul was indeed a contested city in 2015/16. The main targets of the “Islamic State”, however, were Christians rather than Muslims…

“Mosul looks back on 1600 years of Christian tradition. Until recently, the city was the seat of several archbishops of Eastern churches of Syriac tradition…. The cathedral of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and at the same time the oldest church in the city is the Cathedral of St. Thomas from 640 … of the Syrian Catholic Church. However, the cathedral of the latter was the 17th century Syriac Catholic al-Tahira Cathedral, which was almost completely destroyed in 2017 but is to be rebuilt. The Chaldean Catholic Church, in turn, had its episcopal see in the medieval Mart Meskinta Church until it was moved to the 18th century Chaldean al-Tahira Cathedral in the 1980s….

After the conquest of Mosul by ISIS and Islamic State fighters, the Christian inhabitants were given the choice of leaving the city, converting to Islam or being executed. The vast majority of Christians then left Mosul at the end of July, bringing the city’s Christian tradition to an end for the time being. According to Archbishop Louis Raphaël I. Sako, 25,000 Christians were still living in Mosul when ISIS took power; according to the BBC, there were even 35,000…

On February 2, 2015, Islamic State terrorists in Mosul blew up one of Iraq’s largest and oldest Chaldean Catholic churches, the Church of the Virgin Mary. In April 2016, the historic 19th century Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Hour was destroyed. (source Wikipeda)

Open Doors presented a memorable story from Mosul in 2017 with a report. A young man had joined the IS. Christians were expelled or cruelly murdered. He also participated in their expulsion. A few days after the forced exodus of Christians, while walking through the city, he saw men of his age hanging from four crosses, guarded by two IS fighters. Ten metres from the crosses, he looked up at the bloody men and heard one of them ask God to forgive the IS fighters. The others chanted in a weary voice, “Zeedo el-Maseeh tasbeeh – Praise Jesus Christ more and more.”

Traumatised, he left IS and was able to flee. His path led to Istanbul, where he heard the song of the four crucified people again from a group of people – and then joined the Christians. Converted, he returned to Mosul, as did many others. Back to a former stronghold of Christianity. For in Turkey, Christians are almost only to be found in the Istanbul area and behind monastery walls.

So it cannot be this man who knocked on the monastery door accompanied by his bride. Nor is it reported that this man converted to Christianity in the monastery that gives him so much charity. Is there any attempt at all in church or monastery asylums to convince Muslims that their faith is an aberration that is causing so much harm everywhere in Islamic states? I know of one organisation besides Open Doors that is successful in defusing human time bombs – the conversion of Muslims and even former Islamists.

But no, our churches and monasteries prefer to coddle Muslims and show fellow believers the door. Like this abbess, who is to stand trial this month. She has to answer for 30 counts of aiding and abetting illegal residence in Germany. She is doing this with other abbesses and nuns. Women simply have a bigger heart for migrants. Outside the convent walls, too, it is women, mostly single, who are the most active in the voluntary help circles and also tend to offer personal support to migrants. But they are not awarded the Göttingen Peace Prize as the abbess had hoped for the weekend, but they have postponed it. Other volunteers have lost their lives for or in spite of their willingness to help, as happened in Freiburg.

Why do persecuted Christians hardly ever manage to flee to us? To some extent, word has got around among them that sharing accommodation with Muslims is extremely dangerous and conflict-laden. They also know that only a few Christians are willing to accept other Christians. Or they are among the migrants after all and, frightened, do not reveal their faith.

Thus, hardly any victims of war and terror are given any help in Germany, but migrants from the milieu of perpetrators are all the more likely to be helped. Just like the many criminals who have made their way to Germany in the wake of the wave of migration. Some of them are known by name, most of them not yet.

Autor: Albrecht Künstle – https://haolam.de/artikel/Deutschland/44075/btissin-gibt-30-Migranten-Klosterasyl–einem-Christen-nicht.html