The Patriots

By Chris Agee

The Austrian government is pursuing a controversial plan as part of a broader effort to address concerns of radicalization among refugee and immigrant communities.

Amid a wave of right-wing electoral victories, particularly last year’s win by the populist Freedom Party, lawmakers have increasingly targeted Islamic groups for added scrutiny under the country’s so-called law on Islam.

That legislation prohibits any religious group from receiving foreign funds as well as imposes a duty on Muslim groups to respect Austrian tradition through “a positive fundamental view towards state and society.”

The chancellor, who helped craft the law before he was elected to his current post last year, made his position clear in Friday’s news conference.

“Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalizing tendencies have no place in our country,” he said.

At least 11 of these cases are reportedly under review and two imams involved have already been found to be in violation.

 by Claudia Calleja

There have been "quite a number" of women who underwent female genital mutilation and who have turned up at the hospital to give birth, a conference on FGM organised by the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses heard this morning.

 Antoinette Saliba, senior midwife and university lecturer said the patients were often "anxious and so afraid".

There was no local policy on how these cases should be tackled. For example, there was no policy on how to go about the reversal of the infibulation (the sewn vagina) before the woman gave birth. This could be done at various stages including during pregnancy or during the first stages of labour. It was against the law for the vagina to be re-sutured after birth, even though some husbands requested this.

Ms Saliba spoke about the importance of education and also the need to incorporate training on FGM for midwives that was currently obtained through experience. 

Laura Pullicino, a nurse who works with the Jesuit Refugee Services, said she was involved in a project with the UNHCR during which she spoke to women and men and explained to them that FGM was not accepted in Europe and why. 

During group sessions men and women were shown a video clip of the procedure. The clip showed a girl, about five years old, screaming as she was held down by women while her genitals were cut and sewn shut. "You could see the tears in the eyes of the women even after so many years. 

Some women were angry that their culture was being questioned but some recognised that it should not continue. Women spoke about the strong social pressure they felt to undergo FGM as otherwise they were isolated by their community. The women spoke about their experience during intercourse with some husbands slitting them with a knife. 

Group sessions with men revealed that some men said this was done to control their women to ensure they were not promiscuous. When they were shown the video clip some men could not take the images. It turned out they never witnessed an FGM procedure. 

They defended their tradition but were open to discussion. One man said that, now that he saw how it was done, he would never send a woman for the operation.

 Ms Pullicino said there was the need for more sensitivity from healthcare professionals in Malta and she gave the example of a gynaecologist who asked: "What can I do for her? Why did she let them do it to her in the first place?"

 She spoke about the need for more training and education.

Labour MP Chris Fearne urged nurses and midwives to report any cases of female genital mutilation which they knew of and that would soon become a crime under Maltese law.

 In September, Dr Fearne tabled a private members bill in Parliament to make FGM illegal in Malta. This will also apply to cases where Maltese girls are taken abroad for the procedure to be carried out overseas.  The bill is being given a second reading next week and is expected to become law since there seemed to be consensus in Parliament, he said.

 Dr Fearne, a paediatric surgeon, said nurses and midwives were duty bound to report any cases they became aware of. Failing to do so made them, and anyone who did not report such a case, liable to a fine and the new law would exempt them from patient confidentiality in such cases.

 He said it was important to educate people that FGM was not a good thing and to "scare" anyone from performing it in Malta or on a Maltese citizen. He said the World Health Organisation estimated that between 150 million and 200 million women in the world were living with the consequences of FGM but little was known as the western world tended to ignore this.

 "But now we were seeing migrant communities coming into Europe and the subject needs to be discussed," he said.

 "This is not a stand against something from a foreign culture but against something that is intrinsically wrong," he said.

 FGM is a common cultural ritual carried out in many African countries. There are three man types of FGM carried out on young girls. One includes snipping off the clitoris, another removes the clitoris and the inner labia and, in the most severe case, the outer labia are also removed and there is the fusion of the wound.

Women suffer in future as intercourse is painful with some men not managing to penetrate their wives and resorting to creating a slit with a knife. This also creates complications during labour with two per cent of babies dying because of FGM.

by Anonymous

America, we are at war, and the enemy is not across an ocean, it lies within our own borders

by Peter Hasson

• Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, deputy DNC chair, claimed on Sunday that he hasn’t met with Farrakhan since crossing paths with him at two 2013 meetings
• Ellison, a former Nation of Islam member, claimed for years that he cut all ties to Farrakhan since running for Congress in 2006
• Ellison disputed Farrakhan’s account that he and Indiana Rep. Andre Carson visited the hate group leader in his hotel room in 2015
• Carson has already confirmed his own presence at the 2015 meeting

Under fire over his ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison claimed Sunday that he hasn’t attended any meetings with Farrakhan since 2013 and “never had” a relationship with him.

Farrakhan is a notorious anti-Semite and racist whose organization teaches that white people are inherently inferior to black people. Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is a former Nation of Islam member who claimed when he first ran for Congress in 2006 that he had left Farrakhan in his past.

New reporting has shown, however, that Ellison attended multiple meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress. That includes a private visit to Farrakhan’s hotel room in 2015 with Democratic Indiana Rep. Andre Carson. Farrakhan referenced the meeting in a December 2016 Facebook video, and Carson has confirmed that he was present. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Ellison about that meeting, the congressman did not deny that the meeting took place but instead lashed out at his critics.

Ellison lashed out at his critics again in a blog post on Sunday, claiming that he never had a relationship with Farrakhan and hasn’t met him since 2013, apparently contradicting Farrakhan and Carson’s accounts. Ellison did confirm his presence at two Farrakhan meetings that took place in 2013. Ellison claimed questions about his Farrakhan ties are “a smear by factions on the right who want to pit the Jewish community and the Black community against each other.”

“I do not have and have never had a relationship with Mr. Farrakhan, but I have been in the same room as him,” Ellison wrote. “About a decade ago, he and I had a brief, chance encounter in Washington, D.C. In 2013, I attended a meeting in New York City with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and nearly 50 others where I advocated for the release of an American political prisoner. I didn’t know Mr. Farrakhan would be there and did not speak to him at the event. Contrary to recent reports, I have not been in any meeting with him since then, and he and I have no communication of any kind.”

"But as the attacks on me and my fellow Black representatives in Congress intensify, I want to be clear: this is a smear by factions on the right who want to pit the Jewish community and the Black community against each other, and distract from the hatred and bigotry on display by the president and the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville this summer with their anti-Semitic chants and Confederate flags. I declined to dignify questions raised about Mr. Farrakhan because I know they are inherently political, and are designed to separate me from people who I work with every day on issues of importance for Americans of all backgrounds,” Ellison continued.

“The critics will not be satisfied. They won’t be satisfied any more than President Obama’s production of his birth documents satisfied his critics, or Hillary Clinton’s eleven-hour testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi sated her detractors,” he added.  Ellison’s blog post comes as he is increasingly under fire over his ties to Farrakhan.

The Washington Post awarded Ellison “Four Pinocchios,” their worst possible rating, for claiming that his relationship with Farrakhan ended in 2006. The post cited The Daily Caller’s reporting in the fact-check.

Democratic Illinois Rep. Danny Davis, who has repeatedly praised Farrakhan, compared Ellison’s relationship to Farrakhan to a fallen-away Christian’s relationship to Jesus in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation earlier this month.

“I don’t know that Keith knows Farrakhan as well as I do — in fact, I know he doesn’t,” Davis said. “I don’t think that Keith is no person who is super engaged with Farrakhan, he just happens to be a movement. Just like many of the folks who are Christians, they’re not super engaged with Jesus, but they say they Christians,” Davis said. 

Women’s March organization, a prominent left-wing activist group, has come under fire as well after their leaders expressed support for Farrakhan.  The group’s co-president, Tamika Mallory, attended Farrakhan’s annual Saviour’s Day speech last month where he railed against Jews and white people. Mallory defended Farrakhan after suffering backlash by implying that religious leaders are supposed to consider Jews their enemies.  “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!” Mallory wrote on Twitter. She has repeatedly declined to condemn Farrakhan.

Women’s March has lost supporters over the Farrakhan scandal, and several regional chapters have slammed the national organization for refusing to denounce him. The group’s social media director, Alyssa Klein, resigned over the group’s support for Farrakhan, the New York Post reports.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.