THAILAND: Muslims in the South are slaughtering Buddhists in order to ethnically cleanse the area (WARNING: Graphic Images)

Muslims account for a mere 4.6% of population, yet have been spreading fear among the indigenous Buddhists of the region, using violence and brutality. They have resorted to the random killing of Buddhists, including school teachers and Buddhist monks.

(Photos below are of Muslim beheadings, burnings, hackings, and dismemberings of innocent Thai citizens)

SINHALE  Muslim separatists have increasingly and openly rallied against the central government of Thailand, accusing it of ethnic-religious bias, discrimination and corruption. A brutal attack on a Buddhist temple in the town of Pattani in 2005 is seen as an attempt by militants to deepen the religious divide between Muslims and Buddhists in Thailand’s deep South.

Although separatist violence has occurred for decades in the southern region, the campaign escalated in 2004. Over 4300 lives have been lost since the year 2004 owing to Islamic insurgency.  Buddhist monks have been beheaded, children killed and civilians attacked. More than 500 people have been killed in 2004 in three southern Thai provinces. Massive killings occurred throughout the mid to late 2000s and as of 2010, nearly 4,000 people had been killed due to insurgent violence.

The death toll has increased to 2,579 by mid-September 2007 and surpassed 3000 in March 2008. By the end of 2010, insurgency-related violence had increased.  In the first few weeks of January in 2011 nine Buddhists have been killed in Southern Thailand by Islamic terrorists.  In a separate attack four members of Thai armed forces have been killed. Many Buddhists have left their traditional home in Southern Thailand in order to escape the ongoing Islamic insurgency.

Southern Thailand resembles modern day Afghanistan and Somalia because in both these nations the radical Sunni Islamists show their extreme intolerance of other faiths. In addition to Buddhists, moderate Muslims are also being killed by radical Sunni Islamic fanatics of Southern Thailand. The methodology of killing is intended to spread fear to all who oppose the Islamization of Southern Thailand.
.Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Professor of International Relations at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University says “The gruesome fashion of beheadings of Buddhists by Muslim assailants … is not normal violence…” “it is driven by deep animosity and hatred.” Muslim extremists believe that violence, including killing civilians, is justified as a means to restore sharia or Islamic law and maintain Islamic cultural identity. According to the adherents of this brand of Islamist activism, they are engaged in a jihad or a holy struggle against Islam’s enemies, including even fellow Muslims who have abandoned what the extremists view as “true” Islam.
In the last decade, there has been evidence that Islamic institutions of foreign Muslim nations have been involved in promoting Islamic radicalization and the doctrine of Islamic Jihad in Thailand. Thai authorities knew for quite some time that many Muslim Thai activists had been to overseas Islamic schools, where they came under influence of hard-line Muslim teachers. Some were reported to have joined the jihad against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan and returned to Thailand as extremists.

This brand of Islamist extremism is not a new phenomenon. The basic sentiment of today’s Muslim extremists has flourished in the Islamic world for decades. In recent decades the newfound wealth of the oil-rich Middle Eastern Islamic countries and massive immigration of Muslims to the West, Islamic fundamentalism has been on the rise and the dormant spirit of Jihadism has been rekindled once again.

Overall, it is clear that elements within Southern Thailand desire a non-Buddhist land. The younger generation of Muslims are being brainwashed against Buddhists. This hatred and alienation of the younger generation began after many studied at international universities throughout the Middle East. Funding from the Middle East is being used to spread radical Sunni Islamic versions of Islam.

Although the hidden war in Southern Thailand by radical Sunni Islamists is being aimed at moderate Muslims and Buddhists alike,  the Buddhists it is feared face complete annihilation and one day Southern Thailand may end up like Afghanistan, Central Asia, and other areas which once had thriving Buddhist communities.

History reveals vividly how Muslims invaded many former Buddhist countries and subjugated their people subjecting them to extreme forms of violence and untold misery unless people converted to Islam. There have been problems of a varied nature in all countries where Muslims form a minority.  Indonesia and Malaysia were Buddhist countries at a certain time in history.

With Muslim invasions most of the Buddhists in these places were either killed or converted to Islam. More recently in 2001, in the name of Islam, the Taliban destroyed the world renowned monumental Bamiyan Buddha statues built in the 6th century, citing that these were ‘idols’ which are forbidden under Sharia law in Islam. These actions show disrespect, disregard and sheer indifference towards people of other religions. Such attitudes do not allow any community to assimilate with other communities, especially with mainstream communities in countries where they live as a minority.


Muslims spew venom about Valentine’s Day.

The Religion of Hate demonstrates why Muslims are the most reviled people in the world.

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Saudi Blogger who insulted the Paedophile Prophet Muhammad arrested in Malaysia

HAMZA KASHGARI

Apparently, Hamza Kashgari will be extradited to Saudi Arabia where he will likely face execution for blasphemy.

ORIGINAL STORY: dead-man-walking-saudi-blogger-must-flee-country-because-of-tweets-about-paedophile-prophet-muhammad

Arabian Business  Malaysian police have arrested a Saudi Arabian columnist who fled his country after making comments on Twitter deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), prompting a surge of online outrage and calls for his execution.

“It is confirmed that Malaysian police have detained the Saudi writer. This arrest was part of an Interpol operation which the Malaysian police were a part of,” a police spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

Malaysia is a majority Muslim country with a close affinity with many Middle Eastern nations through their shared religion. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by execution under oil-rich Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. It is not a capital crime in Malaysia.

The 23-year-old Kashgari reportedly posted the comments on his Twitter feed to mark the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) birthday on Saturday, drawing thousands of outraged comments on Twitter and other social networking sites.

Kashgari later said in an interview that he was being made a “scapegoat for a larger conflict” over his comments. ”I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom,” Kashgari was quoted as saying in the interview with the Daily Beast website. ”I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights – freedom of expression and thought – so nothing was done in vain.

“Beheading Apostates should be easier than cutting buttons off a shirt,” says Muslim Cleric, which pretty much indicates how the blogger will fare when he gets back to Saudi Arabia.


MUSLIM HONOR KILLER: “Here, listen, my dear daughter, do you know that this is the last day? Tonight, you’re going to die.”

Did you know the first Muslim Honor Killing on American soil happened back in 1989? Of course not. They weren’t calling them ‘honor killings’ back then. Come to think of it, they aren’t calling them honor killings much today, either.

NY TIMES  (H/T Susan K) Tina (her full name was ‘Palestina’) was the last daughter at home and the most American of the family. She had lived in Brazil, Puerto Rico and on the West Bank, but she was happiest in St. Louis. An honor student, she played high school soccer over her father’s objections. Again over his objections, she went to the junior prom, only to be taken away by family members.

ZEIN ISA, Muslim father of Tina

Hoping to hear evidence of terrorist activities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation planted listening devices in the tiny apartment of a Palestinian-American more than two years ago. What the F.B.I. taped were the screams of a teen-age girl being stabbed to death. Sadly, the FBI was not monitoring the tapes when the murder took place.

Now, a jury that heard the tape-recorded voice of the 16-year-old pleading in vain for her life has convicted her parents of murder and recommended that they be put to death.

The jury deliberated more than four hours Saturday before asking for the death penalty against Zein Isa and his wife, Maria. On Friday, the jurors had convicted them in the death of their daughter Tina, the father for stabbing her and the mother for holding her down.

The girl’s screams and moans as she begged her parents not to kill her were captured by devices secretly planted in the apartment by Federal agents who were looking into possible illegal activities by Mr. Isa on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Cultures and Generations Clash.

Mr. Isa was born in Palestine and his wife in Brazil — and the parents’ attempts to control their daughter who, it seems, wanted to be an American teen-ager.

The seven-minute tape of the killing, on which the father is heard shouting in Arabic “Die quickly!” in answer to his daughter’s cries, chilled the jury of seven women and five men and shocked court officials who thought they had seen and heard everything.

“It’s worse than any movie, any film, anything I thought that I would ever hear in my life,” said Bob Craddick, an assistant prosecutor for seven years, who has heard the tape seven or eight times.

Judge Charles A. Shaw of Circuit Court set a Dec. 13 sentencing date for Mr. Isa, 61, a naturalized American citizen, and his wife, 48. The only alternative to the death sentence is life in prison without parole. The defendants are expected to appeal the verdict.

The Isa’s defense said  the tape from Nov. 6, 1989, tells a story not of murder but of a struggle in which Mr. Isa killed the girl in self-defense after she threatened them and demanded money. The parents also maintained that their daughter may have been using drugs or alcohol, and that she had defied them by dating a young man they disapproved of.

On the night of her death…

Tina’s father says: “Here, listen, my dear daughter, do you know that this is the last day. Tonight, you’re going to die?”

Tina responds: “Huh?”

Zein Isa replies: “Do you know that you are going to die tonight?”

The girl’s mother asks her questions about items in her schoolbag. In the midst of her conversation with her mother, Tina begins to shriek in fear.

“Keep still, Tina!” says her father.

“Mother, please help me!”

“Huh? What do you mean?” the mother says.

“Help! Help!”

“What help?” the mother responds.

Tina screams, and Maria says: “Are you going to listen? Are you going to listen?”

Screaming louder, Tina gasps: “Yes! Yes! Yes, I am!” then coughs and adds, “No. Please!” Six Wounds in Chest

The mother says, “Shut up!”

Tina continues to cry, but her voice is unintelligible.

“Die! Die quickly! Die quickly!” the father says.

The girl moans, seems to quiet, then screams one last time.

“Quiet, little one! Die my daughter, die!” the father says.

Tina was stabbed six times in the chest with a boning knife, which pierced her heart, one lung, and liver, investigators said. Mr. Zein admitted on the witness stand that he put his foot on his daughter’s mouth to quiet her.

After the verdicts were read, an agitated family friend who would give her name only as Mrs. Abraham expressed her dismay at what she saw as the jury’s failure to acknowledge the Palestinian culture. “I feel it’s not right. We follow our religion,” said Mrs. Abraham. She said the Isas had to discipline their daughter or lose respect. “They’d be embarrassed in front of everybody in the country like somebody when they go without their clothes outside.”


Egyptian Scholar: “There should be no chopping off of hands for the first five years”

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi recommends that Sharia law for Egypt be implemented in stages. People need to be educated about Sharia before the most sadistic and barbaric forms of punishment can be carried out.

H/T 


EGYPT: Muslim savages strip and sexually assault Dutch woman in Tahrir Square

Several women, some of them foreign, have been brutally attacked and raped by men near Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the past few days. A blonde Dutch tourist was the latest piece of ‘white meat’ attacked by the sex-crazed Muslim barbarians.

Global Post Journalists and activists reported from downtown Cairo that a foreign woman was at the center of a big commotion in a street adjacent to the square, and later reported to have been sexually assaulted and hauled away in an ambulance.

video reportedly of a blonde woman being assaulted in Tahrir on Wednesday night, following anniversary celebrations, was posted Friday morning by Egyptian blogger and student,@RamyYaacoub.  Her husband was unable to protect her from the mob, and a number of other people that came to her aid were also attacked. The woman was stripped and attacked for 10 minutes.

It’s a nasty byproduct of having tens of thousands of people, most of them young men, in one space and with no police presence to speak of. Several incidents of sexual assault, by Egyptian men against both Egyptian and foreign women, have been reported in and around Cairo’s Tahrir Square since anti-military protests intensified this week.  

But sexual assault is not confined to Tahrir, and has long been an issue on the streets of Egypt. In 2008, the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) described sexual harassment as a “social cancer,” with 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in Egypt reporting having been sexually harassed.

 

 


Islamic Cleric explains why no Muslim can ever be your friend

QUR’AN 5:51 “Believers, take not Jews and Christians for your friends.”

“Hanging out with non-Muslims is dangerous because they don’t fear Allah. And they engage in disgusting behavior and customs.


ANOTHER horror story about a European woman who married a Muslim

Janine Schoch

He kidnaps their two children, takes them to Tunisia, and then tries to sell her visitation rights for $184,000.

(You can take the Muslim out of the Islamic hellhole, but you can’t take the misogynist out of the Muslim)

Blick.ch (H/T Islam vs Europe Mother Janine Schoch (30) Schoch met her Muslim husband, Issam O (34), in 2002 during their work as Kinderanimateurin in Turkey. ”He was quite normal,” she says. ”After work we would go drink some more. Even when the clothes could not be nearly enough for him. “ 

The two married and moved to Frauenfeld, where son Elias (7) was born in August 2004. A year later, Jonas (6) was born. ”Then it started,” says Schoch. ”He started to pray, was no longer wearing his gold wedding ring, went to the mosque every Friday.” 

Issam & Janine

Issam demanded that his wife submit to Islamic customs. She refused. “I said to him, ‘If you want to go down that path, do it’” But he taught the children to spit at churches, to spit on the Swiss cross.” She separated from him. Issam O. received weekly visitation rights. 

Husband Issam O. threatened repeatedly to kidnap the two children together Jonas and Elijah and take them to Tunisia. ”I did everything in my power to prevent the abduction. But the authorities thought I was a hysterical woman who wanted to discriminate against the poor foreigner. “ 

The authorities took no action. On 22 August 2010 Issam , with a fake Tunisian passport, he flew with the children to his home country. Janine was told “there is nothing more you can do because the children are no longer under Swiss protection.  I was also told to watch myself.

Eight days after the kidnapping Issam sent his wife an e-mail with a list of his expenses and a note: If you raise $184,000, you could live with me in Tunisia, and see the children again. ”It was as if he wanted to sell me my own children. 

The boys now live with their grandparents in Jendouba, a Tunisian town. Janine was able to visit them once but they do not speak German anymore. I understand their children’s Arabic can tell them I love them. But I do not speak fluent Arabic. Since then she has not seen her children. 

Elias & Jonas

She filed legal complaints but the Tunisian authorities weren’t interested. When her husband made the mistake of travelling to Morocco last year, though, he was apprehended and extradited to Switzerland. There he was charged with kidnapping, attempted extortion and making threats. He got 8 years in prison. But the children are still in Tunisia.

 

 


The politically correct way to handle Islamic massacres and inbred savagery

For example: Don’t hold homicidal Muslim maniacs accountable for their behavior because it will only annoy them and cause you to be accused of ‘Islamophobia.’


“Israel is the punishment sent by Allah for disobedient Muslims”

Think about it, 1.5 billion Muslims still have not been able to wipe out 7 million Jews. It must be God’s will.


SWITZERLAND: Muslim who hacked teenage daughter to death with an axe to stand trial

   

16-year-old hacked to death by Pakistani Muslim father

A Swiss prosecutor has described as a “veritable slaughter” the vicious axe murder of a 16-year-old girl by her 53-year-old Pakistani Muslim father, who believed his daughter had tarnished her family’s honor.

The Local  (H/T TROP)  The charge sheet presented by prosecutor Ulrich Krättli suggests he will call for the accused to be given life in prison, the maximum sentence under Swiss law, when the high-profile case goes to trial on March 14th. He will also be tried for allegedly trying to electrocute his daughter three weeks earlier.

On May 10th 2010, 16-year-old Swera was picked up at a Zurich police station by both her parents. She had been held there by police after she was arrested for a minor theft.

Once back at their apartment in Höngg, on the outskirts of the city, a heated argument broke out between father and daughter. The girl said she wanted to leave home permanently and started to pack her things. She then went down to the basement of the building to get a pair of shoes. While she was gone, her father allegedly retrieved an axe from the balcony and hid it in the bedroom he shared with his wife.

Once she was back in the apartment, the girl went into her parents’ bedroom to pick up some of her belongings. When she bent down to get some things from the wardrobe, her father hit her with the axe on the back of the head, the prosecutor says. The man struck his daughter 19 times with the axe: 12 times with the blade and seven with the blunt end.

The teenager did not die instantly, but lay on the ground in agonising pain for several minutes until her life finally slipped away. The father left the axe between her legs, pointing to the feet, a gesture Krättli does not want to interpret, but that usually has sexual connotations and expresses the motives behind the murder, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reports.

Father being led away from the scene by police

After washing his hands, he left the apartment and called his wife to say he had killed his daughter. Fifteen minutes later, he called the police, who arrested him shortly after near his apartment.

In an interview with newspaper Blick, Swera’s boyfriend explained that the girl’s parents had strongly disapproved of her relationship with him, primarily because he was a Christian. The boy said she was desperate to get away from her parents and had already sought help from a local youth shelter.

According to the prosecutor, the defendant killed his daughter because she had violated his archaic values and had brought shame on the family. Krättli says the Pakistani man had planned the killing “in cold blood”.

On April 20th, the pair had argued after the girl’s father suspected she had been smoking marijuana. Seizing his chance while she was in the bathroom, he pushed her into the bathtub, turned on the tap and threw a hairdryer into the water. 

He wanted to electrocute her, the prosecutor alleges, but his attempt failed because of an in-built security system in the appliance to prevent electric shocks upon contact with water. On that occasion, the 16-year-old girl managed to get away before running to a friend’s home in her wet clothes.

And this just in: PAKISTAN: Uncle hacks niece and her boyfriend to death with axe

 

 

 


“Gay people should get the death penalty,” say hate leaflets handed out by UK MUSLIMS

GAY-FREE ZONE signs seen in Muslim areas of the UK

Five Muslims who distributed leaflets calling for gay people to be executed are in court accused of inciting hatred. One of them said the death penalty had been passed against all homosexuals and showed a mannequin hanging from a noose. Another one showed a lake of fire with a list of punishments for homosexual acts.

UK DAILY MAIL  The five defendants, all from Derby, are the first to be prosecuted under new laws banning the stirring up of hatred due to sexual orientation.

Ihjaz Ali, 42, Razwan Javed, 28, Kabir Ahmed, 28, Umar Javed, 38, and Mehboob Hussain, 44, were arrested following complaints about leaflets distributed in Derby before a gay pride parade in July 2010.

The material was handed out in the street as well as posted through letterboxes. The first, called Death Penalty?, claimed that Allah permitted the destruction of gay people and ‘the only question is how it should be carried out’. The second, called Turn or Burn, featured the figure in a blazing lake with the warning that the decriminalisation of homosexuality was ‘the root of all problems’. A third, GAY – God Abhors You –told of severe punishment for homosexuals.

Bobbie Cheema, prosecuting, told Derby Crown Court the pamphlets were threatening, offensive, frightening and nasty and had been ‘designed to stir up hatred and hostility against homosexual people’.

Hanging homosexuals in Iran always brings out the crowds

Gay men who received the leaflets told the court they feared they had been personally targeted. One witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said he was handed one leaflet in person and received three more in the post. ‘Being a gay man, I thought it was meant for me,’ he said. ‘I felt like I was being targeted. I thought it meant I was going to be burned or something like that.’ Another, who received two of the leaflets in the post, said: ‘I felt threatened. I wondered whether I would be getting a flaming rag through my letter box.’

The jury heard that in the weeks before the gay pride parade, Ihjaz Ali approached police about staging a protest against it. Ali, who the prosecution say organised the distribution of the leaflets, showed officers a list of slogans intended for use on placards and literature. The slogans included ‘paedo gays, you will pay’, ‘turn forever or burn forever’ and ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’. His request was refused and he was later arrested on the back of the welter of public complaints about the leaflets. Ali allegedly told the officers who questioned him that it was his duty to express laws laid down by Allah.

The five defendants are alleged to have handed out one homophobic document outside the Jamia Mosque in Derby

Miss Cheema told the jury: ‘These five defendants were part of a group who distributed horrible, threatening literature, with quotations from religious sources and pictures, which were designed to stir up hostile feelings against homosexual people.’ The court heard that all five defendants accept they distributed the leaflets but deny charges of intending to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation under laws introduced in March 2010.

The maximum penalty for the offences is seven years in jail. Ali faces four charges while Hussain and Umar Javed are charged with two counts each. Razwan Javed and Ahmed are charged with one count each.


SUN NEWS’ Michael Coren gets a ‘love’ letter from Mo (Mohammed?)

It’ so much fun to read fan mail.


Well, well, well, the Texas Christmas Day massacre of 7 people, including the killer, was a MUSLIM honor killing, after all.

'Disobedient' Daughter Nona Yazdanpanah

Truth be told, I quickly discounted my initial reaction that Muslims might be involved because the killer was reported to be in a Santa costume. Stupid me. The ‘Santa’ who massacred his family on Christmas morning was a Muslim who was enraged that his daughter was dating a non-Muslim.

As usual, the media ignored the obvious honor-killing elements of this massacre. Aziz Yazdanpanah had lost control of his family. His wife had left him. His daughter was dating a non-Muslim. And he killed them all. Just as the Ft. Hood Jihadist Massacre was labeled “Workplace Violence,” the Obama-subservient  media are trying to pass off this mass honor killing  as “Holiday Blues.” 

Cousin Sahra Zarei

“Neighbors horrified at news of family’s slayings in Grapevine,” by Gloria Salinas and Scott Goldstein for the Dallas Morning News.(H/T Jihad Watch)

Citing public records and interviews with friends and neighbors, media reports identified Aziz Yazdanpanah and others who had died: his estranged 55-year-old wife, Fatemeh Rahmati, their 19-year-old daughter, Nona Narges Yazdanpanah, and 15-year-old son, Ali Yazdanpanah. Friends of the family said Fatemeh Rahmati’s 58-year-old sister, Zohreh Rahmaty, and her husband, Hossein Zarei, 59, and daughter Sahra Zarei, a 22-year-old pre-med student at the University of Texas at Arlington, also were killed.

 Aziz Yazdanpanah seemed to be losing control of his life in recent months — his wife left him, his house was in foreclosure, and his 19-year-old daughter was dating a young man he didn’t like.

Yazdanpanah, a volunteer high school debate coach described as a doting father, is the focus of suspicion a day after a Christmas morning massacre in which a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six relatives and then committed suicide.

Aziz Yazdanpanah, Muslim father honor killer

Grapevine police arrived at the Lincoln Vineyard Apartment Homes a few minutes before noon and discovered bodies sprawled among opened presents and wrapping paper. The victims were ages 15 to 58. . . .

Yazdanpanah said he bought a gun after expressing concern that his daughter’s boyfriend was stalking him. He also insisted on picking up his daughter from her job at a phone kiosk inside Sam’s Club in Grapevine because of concerns about the alleged stalker. The boyfriend has not been publicly identified.

Wife: Nasrin Rahmaty, center

Neighbors said the family was Muslim but had always hung Christmas lights on their home — except this year. . . .
But a more ominous portrait emerged of Yazdanpanah in interviews with some of his daughter’s other classmates.

“She would come to school crying and telling us her dad was crazy,” said Lacie Reed, 18. “He wouldn’t let her wear certain things. He was always taking her phone away, checking her call history and checking her text messages.”

The Zarei family - Hossein Zarei, Zohreh Rahmaty and Sahra Zarei

Friends said Nona’s father had installed cameras all around the home so he could watch the family’s comings and goings. Others said he nailed her bedroom window shut so she could not sneak out at night and see her boyfriend.

Son: Ali Yazdanpanah, 15,

“She couldn’t date at all until she was a certain age, but when he was going to let her date she couldn’t date anyone outside of their race or religion,” Reed said. “He would take her phone away and her mother would give it back to her and her brother would let her use his phone,” Alvarenga said. “She was doing good. She was just excited that her life was going to start and she was going to have control of it.” . . .

H/T  


Sadly, it’s true. Newly elected Egyptian radical Islamists really do want to destroy the Pyramids

For now members of the Nour (The Light) Salafist party, which won 20% of the vote in recent elections (second only to the Muslim Brotherhood), are talking about putting an end to the ‘idolatry’ represented by the pyramids. This means destruction – along the lines essayed by the Afghan Taliban who blew up the Banyam Buddhas – or ‘concealment’ by covering them with wax. Tourists would presumably see great blobs rather than the perfectly carved steps.

UK DAILY MAIL  This last suggestion was made by Abdel Moneim Al-Shahat, a Nour candidate for parliament. Apart from wanting to do away with this ‘rotten culture’, this gentleman also wants to ban the Nobel prize winning novels of Naguib Mahfouz, one of many great Egyptian writers.

I suppose they could call in the great Bulgarian artist Christo, who specialises in putting curtains across the Grand Canyon or surrounding Pacific atolls in fetching pink cloth? But I doubt they have heard of him.

Salafism means reverting to the mores of the founding generation of Islam, for the close companions of the Prophet were called Salafi meaning ‘pious founders’. Since the last adherent of ancient Egyptian religion allegedly converted (to Christianity) in the fourth century AD, the original Salafists had little to worry about the pyramids and left them alone. 

But not their 21st century successors, who also want what they call ‘halal’ tourism, with women told to dress decorously and no alcohol, something pretty general already in conservative Egypt. The Salafists want segregated beaches, which will not go down well with visitors to Sharm el Sheikh.

Tourism accounts for 11 per cent of Egypt’s $218billion GDP. Right now, hotels and resorts report falls in occupancy from 90 to 15 per cent. 

This is bad news for the 3 million Egyptians who depend on the 14 million tourists who visit Egypt each year. The people affected are not simply waiters and chambermaids, but taxi drivers, camel and horse ride touts, shop and stall owners and ordinary villagers who make a bit on the side providing tea and snacks for Nile cruises.

One of the great tragedies of what is afoot in the Middle East is the extinction of the last vestiges of a vibrant, cosmopolitan culture, as represented by another great Egyptian novelist, the Cairo dentist, Alaa Al Aswany, author of the remarkable Yacoubian Building.

It is becoming hard to recall that in the 1950s – under King Farouk – Egypt had a thriving film industry, producing 300 movies a year, and that its national chanteuse, Umm Kulthum, was worshipped throughout the Middle East. 

But now the fanatics are in the saddle, so its good bye to all that. We’ll have to wait for fundamentalism to fail, as Nasserite ‘national socialism’ did before it. For Nour and the like surely have no answers to the problems of contemporary Egypt.

Are you still happy about the Arab Spring, Obama?

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