Azerbaijan: Eurovision Terror, Assassination Plots Foiled

Azerbaijan: Eurovision Terror, Assassination Plots Foiled

The news reports don't mention when these arrests took place. 

Via Bloomberg:

Azerbaijan said its agents foiled plots by Islamic rebels to kill foreigners at the Eurovision song contest in Baku and assassinate President Ilham Aliyev.

Azeri law-enforcement officials killed two members of the armed group, including its leader, and arrested 40 more, the National Security Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today. The rebels have links to insurgents in the Dagestan region of neighboring Russia, according to the ministry. 

(source)

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Immigrants in Spain feel more integrated than those in Northern Europe

Immigrants in Spain feel more integrated than those in Northern Europe

Via ThinkSpain:

According to the latest survey of immigrants carriedou by the King Balduino Foundation and the Migration Policy Group, legal immigrants in Spain feel more integrated than those in Northern Europe thanks to the ease with which they can handle bureaucratic matters, like requesting residence permits or family reunification; find work and learn the language.

(source)

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Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Via CNN:

On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistan via Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards.

Buried inside them was a pornographic video called "Kick Ass" -- and a file marked "Sexy Tanja."

Several weeks later, after laborious efforts to crack a password and software to make the file almost invisible, German investigators discovered encoded inside the actual video a treasure trove of intelligence -- more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included an inside track on some of the terror group's most audacious plots and a road map for future operations.

Future plots include the idea of seizing cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks by Pakistani militants that paralyzed the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. Ten gunmen killed 164 people in that three-day rampage.

Terrorist training manuals in PDF format in German, English and Arabic were among the documents, too, according to intelligence sources.

(source)

READ MORE - Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Europe: Amnesty International Finds Bias Against Muslims

Europe: Amnesty International Finds Bias Against Muslims

Via RFE/RL:

A new report from Amnesty International has found that some European Muslims are regularly denied employment and educational opportunities because of widespread cultural and religious stereotypes that lead to discrimination against them.

The report, titled "Choice and Prejudice: Discrimination Against Muslims in Europe," examines the lives of Muslims in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands.

It found that individuals who wear specific forms of dress, like a head scarf, or other symbols associated with Islam, do worse with jobs and schooling because of prejudicial attitudes and legal impunity in these European states.

(source)

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Iranian VP: European Leaders Fear Spread of Islam

Iranian VP: European Leaders Fear Spread of Islam


Via FNA:

The eye-catching growth in the number of mosques being built in Europe has made leaders of the European states deeply fearful of the rapid

spread of Islam and increasing conversion of their nations from Christianity, Iranian Vice-President Seyed Mohammad Reza Mir-Tajeddini said. 

"Leaders of the European countries feel deeply endangered by the growing desire and conversion of their people from Christianity to the religion of Islam and the increasing number of mosques in their countries," Mir-Tajeddini said on Sunday. 

(source)

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EU: Islamic terrorists issue threat against Eurovision

EU: Islamic terrorists issue threat against Eurovision

Via Irish Independent (h/t Bivouac-ID)

TERRORISTS have threatened to target Jedward and other Eurovision participants at the annual music competition in May.

The Azeri terrorists, an Islamic group, have said they will target the participants of the Eurovision song contest in Azerbaijan as they are “European scum”. It has threatened the use of “knives and chemical weapons” at the contest.

The terror group said in a statement yesterday “Blood of the European scum must be shed by the will of Allah.”

(source)

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EU: Ministers warn Greece to tighten border controls

EU: Ministers warn Greece to tighten border controls

Via Reuters:

EU countries have become increasingly critical of Greece's lax control of its border with Turkey, as the number of immigrants crossing it has risen due to political unrest in the Middle East.

A group of seven EU ministers of justice and home affairs urged Greece to improve border controls using available EU funds.

The asylum process in Greece proceeds slowly, if at all. Many refugees are leaving Greece and heading for other EU countries; something the interior ministers of Germany, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, France, the UK and the Netherlands want to prevent.

(source)

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EU: Christian migrants outnumber Muslims

EU: Christian migrants outnumber Muslims

Via Reuters:

The study defined migrants as people living in another country in 2010 for over a year, including estimates of illegal immigrants and long-term refugees including Palestinians and their descendants.

"Perhaps contrary to popular perception, ... Christian immigrants outnumber Muslim immigrants in the European Union as a whole," the report said, indirectly referring to far-right parties that have long campaigned against Muslim newcomers.

Of the 47 million migrants in the EU, 26 million (56 percent) are Christians, double the 13 million Muslim migrants, who make up only 27 percent of the total, it said.

The gap narrows when intra-EU migration - for example, Christian Greeks to Germany or French-born Muslims to Britain - is excluded, but Christians migrating from outside the EU still outnumber non-EU Muslim migrants by about 13 million to 12 million.

(source)

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Turkey: Parliamentary Speaker warns against xenophobia in Europe

Turkey: Parliamentary Speaker warns against xenophobia in Europe



Via the Hurriyet Daily News:

Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Çiçek has warned that racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia have escalated in Europe and threaten global values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law, adding that political parties with extremist tendencies had recently increased their popular support.

“As people in North Africa and Middle East risk their lives to fight an honorable struggle that highlights the joint values of humanity; in Europe racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia are on the rise with the economic crisis. It is of great concern that political parties portraying migrants as a source of security concern, unemployment, crime, poverty and other social problems are increasing their support,” Cemil Çiçek told a session on intercultural dialogue as part of the Third Consultation Meeting of the Parliamentary Speakers of the G20 Countries in Riyadh.

(source)

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EU: Police bust Afghan migrant smuggling ring

EU: Police bust Afghan migrant smuggling ring

Via AFP:

Police have arrested six members of a ring suspected of transporting thousands of illegal migrants from Afghanistan to Europe via Greece, making millions of euros, the EU justice agency said Friday.

Police from Belgium, Britain, France and Greece took part in "Operation Pakoul", named after a traditional hat worn in Afghanistan, against the ring which smuggled an estimated 5,000 illegal immigrants over the last 10 months.

"The main organiser in Greece is estimated to have smuggled between 120 and 160 migrants each week into various member states," Eurojust said in a statement issued in The Hague.

(source)

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Switzerland: OSCE calls for Muslim umbrella organisation

Switzerland: OSCE calls for Muslim umbrella organisation

Via SwissInfo:

Experts from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have recommended the establishment of an umbrella organisation for all Swiss Muslims.

In their report, seen by the Swiss News Agency on Tuesday, three OSCE experts who visited Switzerland in November warned that intolerance and discrimination against Muslims had increased since 2001, and were being exploited by “the extreme right and populist parties”.

(source)

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Is Europe setting up clash between Muslims and the West?

Is Europe setting up clash between Muslims and the West?

Via CNN:

Europe and the Muslim world seem to be on a collision course that could have major political, economic and ideological ramifications. January 23, 2012, may well come to be remembered as the crucial date when Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis, which many of us believed discredited beyond repair, was reaffirmed.

Political scientist Huntington wrote in 1993 that cultural divisions preclude a defining global civilization, and the West and the Muslim world would never share the same values.

Last month, Europe took two different actions that nonetheless sent the same message to the Muslim world: You are not our equals and are doomed to be judged by standards different from those by which we judge ourselves. Future historians might call January 23 the day when Europe irreversibly alienated not one, but both, pivotal powers -- Iran and Turkey -- that in all probability will dominate the political landscape of the Middle East for several decades.

(source)

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EU: 'Being too Western' reason for 71% of 'honour' killings

EU: 'Being too Western' reason for 71% of 'honour' killings

Via the Irish Independent:

Yes, it's a cultural rather than a religious thing, stemming from some nasty tribal customs of South Asia and the Middle East, but though Hindus, Sikhs and the odd Christian might be perpetrators, the blunt truth is that honour killings are mainly Muslim-on-Muslim (91 per cent worldwide, 84 per cent North America, 96 per cent Europe).

Worldwide, two-thirds of victims (93 per cent women) were killed by their families of origin: 49 per cent in North America, 66 per cent in Europe and 72 per cent in Muslim countries. More than half the victims died in agony, having been either gang-raped or burned or stoned or beheaded or stabbed many times.

Being 'too Western' did for 58 per cent: this includes being insufficiently subservient, rejecting Islamic dress, wanting a career, having non-Muslim friends or boyfriends, rejecting an arranged marriage or leaving an abusive husband. This criterion covers 91 per cent of North American murders, 71 per cent of European and 43 per cent in the Muslim world. Offences against sexual propriety (eg being raped or accused of adultery) were the justification for the other murders.

(source)

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EU: Syrian embassies attacked by protestors

EU: Syrian embassies attacked by protestors

The Syrian embassy in London was attacked Saturday by a small group of angry protestors. Similar scenes played out in the past couple of days in Athens and Berlin.

READ MORE - EU: Syrian embassies attacked by protestors