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Court says Texas wrong to take children
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:44 PM
SAN ANGELO, Texas, May 22 (UPI) -- Texas state agencies seized children from a polygamist compound without any proof that they were in "imminent enough" danger, a state appeals court ruled. -
Canadian home renovations climbed in 2007
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:40 PM
OTTAWA, May 22 (UPI) -- Canadians spent $19.7 billion on home renovations in 2007, up by some $2 billion from a year earlier, a federal agency reported Thursday. -
Sainthood sought for Pope John Paul II
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:36 PM
VATICAN CITY, May 22 (UPI) -- Pope John Paul II could be beatified by next spring, possibly in time for the fourth anniversary of his death, a cardinal at the Vatican predicts.
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Court says Texas wrong to take children
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:44 PM
SAN ANGELO, Texas, May 22 (UPI) -- Texas state agencies seized children from a polygamist compound without any proof that they were in "imminent enough" danger, a state appeals court ruled. -
Canadian home renovations climbed in 2007
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:40 PM
OTTAWA, May 22 (UPI) -- Canadians spent $19.7 billion on home renovations in 2007, up by some $2 billion from a year earlier, a federal agency reported Thursday. -
Sainthood sought for Pope John Paul II
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:36 PM
VATICAN CITY, May 22 (UPI) -- Pope John Paul II could be beatified by next spring, possibly in time for the fourth anniversary of his death, a cardinal at the Vatican predicts. -
Naked gator man arrested for missing court
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:31 PM
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Senate passes increase in veterans' aid
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:29 PM
WASHINGTON, May 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate approved a significant increase in education benefits Thursday for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, passing the bill by a veto-proof margin. -
Quake scenario unveiled for S.California
Published: May 22, 2008 at 3:27 PM
RESTON, Va., May 22 (UPI) -- If California were struck by an earthquake similar to the one that devastated China, 1,800 people would die, the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday.
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Commentary: Multicultural boondoggle
Published: April 10, 2007 at 12:07 PM
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) -- Islamic activists in Europe have taken a leaf out of the old Communist guidebook for the "long march through the institutions." In Antwerp, for example, the City Council has been infiltrated by Islamist fundamentalists -- Belgian citizens, of course -- who keep pushing the envelope with impunity.
From the British city of Leeds to Livorno in Italy and from Luxembourg to Ljubljana in Slovenia, multiculturalism is pretty much a bust. Quicksand is the only common ground between Western values and militant Muslim fundamentalism. But some Islamist extremists have found willing partners among leftist radicals who never got over the end of the Cold War -- and jump at any opportunity to rumble against whatever government is in power.
In Germany, the weekly Der Spiegel documented case after case of Muslims, and local German benefactors or sympathizers, busy paving the way for a Muslim "parallel" society. A Moroccan-born, 26-year-old German who had been subjected to her husband's "corporal punishment" and was denied grounds for divorce triggered a nationwide cry of outrage.
Judge Christa Datz-Winter of Frankfurt's family court even quoted the Koran -- Sura 4, verse 34 -- when she wrote in her decision the Muslim Holy Book contains "both the husband's right to use corporal punishment against a disobedient wife and the establishment of the husband's superiority over the wife."
Der Spiegel, Germany's foremost news magazine, commented, "In one fell swoop, Germany's Muslims took a substantial bite out of the legal foundations of Western civilization." Yet some liberal judges see Muslim subcultures as mitigating circumstances. "Polygamous marriages must be recognized if they are legal under the laws of the native country of the individuals in question," the Federal Ministry for Social Affairs instructed insurance agencies in 2004. Thus, Muslim men were allowed to add additional wives to government health-insurance policies without paying an additional premium. This was later reversed.
Zero tolerance for intolerance has gone the way of the Dodo. Now, misguided tolerance has spawned liberal opinions that categorize Muslim honor killings as manslaughter, not murder. Some Islamic experts in German universities are already asking whether Sharia law, or Islamic law, is gradually infecting German law.
Muslims are now authorized to take their kids out of swimming lessons, and prayer breaks for Muslims have won out in industrial plants. A year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, a Muslim religious leader in Hesse issued what became known as the "camel fatwa." A Muslim woman could travel no more than 49 miles from the home of her husband or parents without being accompanied by a male blood relative. That was the distance a camel caravan could travel within 24 hours in the days of the Prophet Mohammad.
Conservatives see the multicultural illusions of recent decades as naïve. Islamists are not interested in cultural diversity.
The European cult of appeasement has given free rein to radical imams whose only goal is to Islamicize Christian Europe. The terrain is fertile. Only 20 percent of Europe's Christians attend church services on Sunday, but mosques are packed with worshippers on Fridays, where sermons are political paeans to the courageous jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact they are fighting American and NATO troops (including Germans) is left unmentioned. But Judge Klaus Feldmann of the Potsdam District Court outside Berlin ruled that ZDF public television had to delete reference on its Web site to the former imam of Berlin's Mevlana mosque as a "hate preacher."
Judge Datz-Winter was finally removed from the case. But gradual encroachment of fundamentalist Islam continues apace in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Albania, Kosovo and elsewhere. Denmark, where a cartoonist whose work disparaged Prophet Mohammed set off demonstrations in Europe and even riots in the Middle East in September 2005, has taken what for Europe passes for a stern measure: Foreigners who marry Danish women will not be entitled to any welfare-state benefits until their fifth anniversary.
German city skylines are sprouting minarets, and irate citizens in several cities have petitioned for a halt to the muezzins' 5 a.m. call to prayers, which wakes up the neighborhood an hour before citizens normally get up to go to work. But judges decreed that since church bells are legal, the muezzins' wailing chants are too.
Europe's churches have provided sanctuaries that welcome illegal Muslims from North and sub-Sahara Africa, as well as the Middle East, where they can stay while their community lawyers move their appeals through local courts. Brussels Journal Editor Paul Belien wrote, "While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian churches are committing suicide." By way of comparison, Saudi Arabia, whose Wahhabi clergy has dispatched missionaries to Western countries, does not allow a single Christian church.
The European Union's 27 member countries now house some 20 million Muslims, which is expected to double in less than 20 years. No one is more alarmed about current trends than Pope Benedict, who said recently, "Unfortunately, one must note that Europe seems to be traveling along a road that could lead to its disappearance from history."
In a remarkable piece of research and analysis, Russell Shorto, who covers religion for the New York Times Sunday magazine, wrote that the pope's speech last September "that caromed around the world and caused protests in the Middle East and attacks on Christian churches (there) for seeming to say that Islam is a religion of violence, marked a homecoming, albeit an incendiary one." The pontiff's main target is still the spiritual apathy of Europeans.
As Germany's Cardinal Ratzinger, he co-authored a book titled "Without Borders," which pilloried Europe's secular dogma that stripped Europe of its soul: "Not only are we no longer Christian; we're anti-Christian. So we don't know who we are."
Der Spiegel quotes Berlin attorney Seyran Ates: "We are at a crossroads, everywhere in Europe. Do we allow structures that lead straight into a parallel society, or do we demand assimilation into the democratic constitutional state?" The European Union switchboard in Brussels finally located someone who said no such question had been posed to the European Commission.
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) -- Islamic activists in Europe have taken a leaf out of the old Communist guidebook for the "long march through the institutions." In Antwerp, for example, the City Council has been infiltrated by Islamist fundamentalists -- Belgian citizens, of course -- who keep pushing the envelope with impunity.
From the British city of Leeds to Livorno in Italy and from Luxembourg to Ljubljana in Slovenia, multiculturalism is pretty much a bust. Quicksand is the only common ground between Western values and militant Muslim fundamentalism. But some Islamist extremists have found willing partners among leftist radicals who never got over the end of the Cold War -- and jump at any opportunity to rumble against whatever government is in power.
In Germany, the weekly Der Spiegel documented case after case of Muslims, and local German benefactors or sympathizers, busy paving the way for a Muslim "parallel" society. A Moroccan-born, 26-year-old German who had been subjected to her husband's "corporal punishment" and was denied grounds for divorce triggered a nationwide cry of outrage.
Judge Christa Datz-Winter of Frankfurt's family court even quoted the Koran -- Sura 4, verse 34 -- when she wrote in her decision the Muslim Holy Book contains "both the husband's right to use corporal punishment against a disobedient wife and the establishment of the husband's superiority over the wife."
Der Spiegel, Germany's foremost news magazine, commented, "In one fell swoop, Germany's Muslims took a substantial bite out of the legal foundations of Western civilization." Yet some liberal judges see Muslim subcultures as mitigating circumstances. "Polygamous marriages must be recognized if they are legal under the laws of the native country of the individuals in question," the Federal Ministry for Social Affairs instructed insurance agencies in 2004. Thus, Muslim men were allowed to add additional wives to government health-insurance policies without paying an additional premium. This was later reversed.
Zero tolerance for intolerance has gone the way of the Dodo. Now, misguided tolerance has spawned liberal opinions that categorize Muslim honor killings as manslaughter, not murder. Some Islamic experts in German universities are already asking whether Sharia law, or Islamic law, is gradually infecting German law.
Muslims are now authorized to take their kids out of swimming lessons, and prayer breaks for Muslims have won out in industrial plants. A year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, a Muslim religious leader in Hesse issued what became known as the "camel fatwa." A Muslim woman could travel no more than 49 miles from the home of her husband or parents without being accompanied by a male blood relative. That was the distance a camel caravan could travel within 24 hours in the days of the Prophet Mohammad.
Conservatives see the multicultural illusions of recent decades as naïve. Islamists are not interested in cultural diversity.
The European cult of appeasement has given free rein to radical imams whose only goal is to Islamicize Christian Europe. The terrain is fertile. Only 20 percent of Europe's Christians attend church services on Sunday, but mosques are packed with worshippers on Fridays, where sermons are political paeans to the courageous jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact they are fighting American and NATO troops (including Germans) is left unmentioned. But Judge Klaus Feldmann of the Potsdam District Court outside Berlin ruled that ZDF public television had to delete reference on its Web site to the former imam of Berlin's Mevlana mosque as a "hate preacher."
Judge Datz-Winter was finally removed from the case. But gradual encroachment of fundamentalist Islam continues apace in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Albania, Kosovo and elsewhere. Denmark, where a cartoonist whose work disparaged Prophet Mohammed set off demonstrations in Europe and even riots in the Middle East in September 2005, has taken what for Europe passes for a stern measure: Foreigners who marry Danish women will not be entitled to any welfare-state benefits until their fifth anniversary.
German city skylines are sprouting minarets, and irate citizens in several cities have petitioned for a halt to the muezzins' 5 a.m. call to prayers, which wakes up the neighborhood an hour before citizens normally get up to go to work. But judges decreed that since church bells are legal, the muezzins' wailing chants are too.
Europe's churches have provided sanctuaries that welcome illegal Muslims from North and sub-Sahara Africa, as well as the Middle East, where they can stay while their community lawyers move their appeals through local courts. Brussels Journal Editor Paul Belien wrote, "While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian churches are committing suicide." By way of comparison, Saudi Arabia, whose Wahhabi clergy has dispatched missionaries to Western countries, does not allow a single Christian church.
The European Union's 27 member countries now house some 20 million Muslims, which is expected to double in less than 20 years. No one is more alarmed about current trends than Pope Benedict, who said recently, "Unfortunately, one must note that Europe seems to be traveling along a road that could lead to its disappearance from history."
In a remarkable piece of research and analysis, Russell Shorto, who covers religion for the New York Times Sunday magazine, wrote that the pope's speech last September "that caromed around the world and caused protests in the Middle East and attacks on Christian churches (there) for seeming to say that Islam is a religion of violence, marked a homecoming, albeit an incendiary one." The pontiff's main target is still the spiritual apathy of Europeans.
As Germany's Cardinal Ratzinger, he co-authored a book titled "Without Borders," which pilloried Europe's secular dogma that stripped Europe of its soul: "Not only are we no longer Christian; we're anti-Christian. So we don't know who we are."
Der Spiegel quotes Berlin attorney Seyran Ates: "We are at a crossroads, everywhere in Europe. Do we allow structures that lead straight into a parallel society, or do we demand assimilation into the democratic constitutional state?" The European Union switchboard in Brussels finally located someone who said no such question had been posed to the European Commission.
© 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
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