Germany: Man stabbed by jihadi fined for criticizing Islam

No surprise the German government chose to suppress the Islam critic after the jihad stabbing, instead of ensuring new arrivals embraced Western values like pluralism and free speech.

By Robert Spencer, Frontpage Magazine

Here is a story that neatly encapsulates the threat that the West faces and the weakness of its response to that threat.

In Germany, a vociferous critic of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others, Michael Stürzenberger, was stabbed several months ago by a jihadi precisely because of his opposition to those evils.

Now, a German court has added insult to injury, convicting Stürzenberger of “incitement to hatred” and fining him €3,600 ($3,800).

So it has come to this: what the jihadi began, the German government is now continuing. What will be the effects of this on the freedom of speech in Germany?

That’s obvious: if this continues, Germany is dead as a free society.

In Spiked Wednesday, the publication’s Germany correspondent Sabine Beppler-Spahl was generally sympathetic to Stürzenberger, but added a significant and telling caveat.

She asserted that “there’s little doubt that Stürzenberger can be offensive. He claims that his criticism only applies to ‘political Islam’, calling it a threat to democracy and an ideology that oppresses women. But he has also compared parts of the Koran with Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ and – while saying that not all Muslims are rapists – has talked of ‘thousands of women’ who have been sexually assaulted by Muslims from Northern Africa and Arabia.”

Here yet again we see how unpopular and unwelcome truths are stigmatized as “offensive” even among people who should know better; but does that make them any less true?

Sabine Beppler-Spahl appears to be unaware of the fact that the Qur’an contains numerous passages (not just one or two) that are profoundly and disturbingly antisemitic.

The Jews in the Qur’an are called the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82).

They are accused of hiding the truth and misleading people (2:109; 3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); and being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18).

They are depicted as slandering the true religion (Islam) (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); and never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100).

Allah transforms the disobedient Jews into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166). They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).

And there is much more of this, making “Mein Kampf” look practically benign by comparison.

As for “‘thousands of women who have been sexually assaulted by Muslims from Northern Africa and Arabia,” take just one British city as an example.

The BBC reported in 2014 that “at least 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013,” and British officials did nothing; they “described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.”

Those perpetrators were largely Pakistani, not North African or Arab, but they shared with many North African and Arab rapists the same understanding of the Qur’an’s permission for the sexual abuse of infidel women (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30).

The fact that even a friendly observer would think Stürzenberger had gone too far in making these statements is an indication of the depth of ignorance regarding this problem in Germany and all over Europe and North America.

Even among patriots in the U.S., there are all too many who still wear rose-colored glasses regarding the teachings of the Qur’an, the likelihood of “moderate Muslims” saving the day, and so on.

So it’s no wonder that the German government, when faced with the jihad stabbing of this critic of Islam, thought it best to clamp down on him, rather than try to ensure that the new arrivals to Germany shared Western values of pluralism, tolerance, and the respect for the freedom of speech.

“It is difficult to escape the impression,” writes Beppler-Spahl, “that he has been targeted by German political and media elites because of their fear of right-wing populism. That is, they fear his criticism of Islam will further fuel the rise of the populist right. After all, Stürzenberger gives voice to many Germans’ scepticism and rejection of mass migration from majority Muslim countries.”

Indeed. And that’s ultimately what his legal persecution is all about.

Stürzenberger is not a politician and is not running for office, but in many ways, his legal woes resemble those of Donald Trump.

Leftist elites have targeted both men on the flimsiest of charges, essentially for the crime of threatening their hegemony.

If they prevail over either one, it could mean the end of their country as a free society.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. And right now, it looks as if the German elites are succeeding in taking their country into darkness.

AntisemitismFree SpeechIslamTerrorism