Muslims are suspected of poisoning dogs in Spain because of the Islamic teaching that such pets are unclean, according to a report from Soeren Kern, an analyst with the Strategic Studies Group based in Madrid. Writing for the Hudson New York website, which studies international affairs and focuses on human rights and terrorism, Kern reported that authorities have found more than a dozen dogs poisoned in Catalonia in northeast Spain.
The battle in Lérida, he wrote, is between dog owners and Muslims, who think dogs trespass their religious rights.
No Room for Old Yeller
According to Kern, “All of the dogs were poisoned in September … [in] Lérida’s working class neighbourhoods of Cappont and La Bordeta, districts that are heavily populated by Muslim immigrants and where many dogs have been killed in recent years.”
Lérida (pictured above) is a little more than 100 miles west of Barcelona on Spain’s east coast.
Dog owners in the city say the dogs are poisoned because Islam regards them as “unclean.” Indeed, Islam teaches that dogs are “najis,” meaning ritually unclean, and that “Islam forbids Muslims to keep dogs,” according to the Islam Q&A website.
Unsurprisingly, Kern reported, “”Residents taking their dogs for walks have been harassed by Muslim immigrants opposed to seeing the animals in public. Muslims have also launched a number of anti-dog campaigns on Islamic websites and blogs based in Spain.”
So bad has the Muslim jihad against dogs become that more than four dozen residents have formed six-man patrols to escort dog walkers.
For their part, the city’s 29,000 Muslims, about 20 percent of the city’s population, want dogs banned, Kern noted, citing a newspaper report. “In July, two Islamic groups based in Lérida asked city officials to regulate the presence of dogs in public spaces so they do not ‘offend Muslims,’ ” Kern said, adding,
Muslims are demanding that dogs be banned from all forms of public transportation including all city buses as well as from all areas frequented by Muslim immigrants.
Other Problems in Spain
And dogs, he wrote, aren’t the only problem with Muslims the city is having. As well, reported Kern, in December 2010, Lérida banned the burqa, the head-to-toe covering Muslim women wear, in public buildings. A religious group which fought the ban on grounds of religious discrimination lost its appeal.
Lérida is also the target for the expansion of radical Islam, Kern reported. “In September 2010, Watani president Mourad El-Boudouhi submitted a letter to the Lérida city council in which he asked the mayor to provide him with free land so that he can build a mosque in downtown Lérida. The mosque would be financed by Morocco.” According to Kern:
The Moroccan mosque would compete with another mosque project in Lérida that is being financed by Saudi Arabia. The imam at the Saudi mosque is Abdelwahab Houzi, a Salafi jihadist preacher who adheres to the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam.
Salafism is a branch of revivalist Islam that calls for restoring past Muslim glory by forcibly establishing a universal Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe such as Spain, which Salafists view as a Muslim state that must be re-conquered for Islam.
Islam Developments in Germany
In Germany, dogs aren’t the problem, Kern also reported last week.
In late September, the leftist Spiegel Online reported that the German domestic intelligence agency, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, might increase the surveillance of those opposed to the Islamization of the country because they are “extremists.”
The subject was scheduled to be discussed on September 29, the magazine reported. Calling the targets of this spying “Islamophobes,” Spiegel reported that “there are concerns that the anti-Muslim scene is becoming increasingly dangerous, and some intelligence officials want it to be subject to greater scrutiny, despite stringent German privacy laws.”
On Oct. 3, again writing at Hudson, New York, Kern reported that the BfV acted after a “three-week-long smear campaign by members of the German mainstream media, who have been relentless in their efforts to discredit the so-called counter-jihad movement in Germany.”
According to Kern, Frankfurter Rundschau is the tip of the media’s pro-Islamic spear.
The media campaign has been led by the Frankfurter Rundschau, a financially troubled daily newspaper based in Frankfurt am Main, the Berliner Zeitung, and the leftwing Spiegel, a newsmagazine based in Hamburg that has long served as the mouthpiece for German multiculturalism.
A particular object of wrath is a highly popular German-language Internet website called Politically Incorrect (PI), which over the years has grown into a major information resource for people concerned about the spread of Islam in Germany.
PI’s motto is “Against the Mainstream, Pro-American, Pro-Israel, Against the Islamification of Europe,” which, Kern observed, “represents everything the German left abhors.”
Thus, the smear campaign, in which German newspapers “have used a stock of more than 10,000 stolen private emails to insinuate that the people behind PI are “undemocratic” and pose a threat to the German constitutional order.”
They are demanding that the PI website, as well as the counter-jihad movement (referred to as “Islamophobes”) more generally, be subject to surveillance by the domestic German intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV).
The articles Frankfurter Rundschau has published include “Politically Incorrect: Vulgar, Uninhibited, Racist,” which called the PI website an “an international network of Islam haters and Muslim stalkers. This is confirmed by research conducted by the Frankfurter Rundschau.”
Another article, “PI News: Prototype of the New Right,” shows that the new right’s anti-Islam activism and concerns show “parallels to anti-Semitism.” Other articles, Kern reported, include “Politically Incorrect: Where the Internet Stinks,” “Rightwing Populists: United in their Hatred of Muslims,” and “Politically Correct Hatred.”
The newspaper in Berlin called PI “Politically Incorrect: Inside the Network of Islam Haters” in a headline over its article.
Surveys Show Germans Disagree
Kern also reported that the German public largely agrees with PI and not the leftist media. A poll from the University of Münster and a top German polling firm “shows that the majority of Germans disagree with a statement by German President Christian Wulff that Islam ‘belongs in Germany’ because of the four million Muslims who now live there.”
The study shows that only 34% of the West Germans and 26% of the East Germans have a positive view of Muslims. Fewer than 5% of the Germans think Islam is a tolerant religion, and only 30% say they approve of the building of mosques. The number of Germans who approve of the building of minarets or the introduction of Muslim holidays is even lower.
Fewer than 10% of the West Germans and 5% of the East Germans say that Islam is a peaceful religion. More than 40% of Germans believe that the practice of Islam should be vigorously restricted.
Only 20% of the Germans believe that Islam is suitable for the Western world. Significantly, more than 80% of the Germans agree with the statement, “Muslims must adapt to our culture.” More than one million immigrants living permanently in Germany cannot speak German.
Another poll titled Global Views on Immigration, from Britain’s Ipsos polling organization, demonstrated that Germans believe “there are too many immigrants.” Fifty-four percent believe immigrants have adversely affected the country.
A report from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, “Muslim-Western Tensions Persist,” showed that 72 percent of German citizens believe that the Muslims among them do not want to integrate. Nearly 80 percent think Islam is “the most violent religion.”
Another GAP poll showed that a large majority of Germans, 71 percent, want Islamic veils banned in public, while a survey from a leftist think thank showed that Germans generally think that Arabs are “unpleasant.”
Photo: La Seu Vella cathedral in Lleida, Spain.
