"Would you have enjoyed it so much if a mosque at the center of Europe were converted into a church?" — Ertugrul Özkök, Hurriyet, March 8, 2014.

Turkey, however, also apparently wanted to inflict humiliation on the West. By turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque, Erdogan has been able to embarrass Washington, mock Brussels and defy Moscow.

For Erdogan and the Islamists, Hagia Sophia is the prime symbol of Christianity's subjugation to Islam.

"Hagia Sophia is the symbol of conquest. It belongs to us". — Yunus Genç, head of the Istanbul branch of the Anatolian Youth Association, Le Figaro, October 7, 2020.

When cartoons of Mohammed appeared in Danish and French newspapers in 2005, the Muslim world erupted in violence.... Now that Turkey is turning its formerly most important Christian monument into a mosque, there is no protest, only silence and mumbling, which are nothing but the soundtrack of the West's submission to Islam.

When he attended theology classes in Medina, Malcolm X was known as "the American brother" because he did not wish to discard his American-ness. His message was one of hard work and self-betterment rather than moaning and commerce with victimhood.

In recent weeks, anti-American cabals have unleashed much sound and fury but little of substance; much heat, but little light. Their aim is to terrorize the majority by pretending that hatred of America is more widespread than it really is.

In Texas, during the Mexican-American war, Ulysses S. Grant, then a lieutenant, accompanied by another officer, goes to investigate the howling of what sounds like a huge pack of wolves. When they arrived, they saw that: "There were just two of them; they had made all the noise we had heard. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noises of a few disappointed politicians... There are always more of them before they are counted."

"[W]e are neglecting to properly address the religious and racist aspects of grooming gang crimes.... It's telling them that it's OK to hate white people." — "Ella", a British woman who was raped more than 100 times in her youth by a Pakistani sex grooming gang, YorkshireLive, April 29, 2020.

Advice against alcohol, drugs, and reckless behavior would be more compelling if it were not made under duress.

Even when it comes to rape, then, if the victim is white and the rapist is not, she is no victim at all; worse, she is a "racist" and "hater" who, if anything, apparently deserves what she got and more. "Blame the victim" is back with a vengeance and gaining ground throughout the West.

On February 27, Erdoğan's government was on the threshold of executing its threat to flood Europe with millions of (mostly Syrian) migrants ... Hundreds of thousands of migrants began flocking to the border. By the next day, Greece was not only operating 52 Navy ships to guard its islands close to Turkey; it had also mobilized additional troops on land. Its security forces were able to block 10,000 migrants from entering Greece by way of the Turkish land border.

The new blackmail will not work for a number of reasons. First, because many migrants in Turkey have learned from experience that the Turkish-Greek border can no longer easily be crossed. And second, because the Greek security forces are now better equipped and better prepared to confront a new wave of migrants.

Last year, Palestinian activists took to the streets of the Gaza Strip to protest economic hardship and demand that Hamas provide solutions for soaring unemployment and poverty rates. The protests, held under the banner "We want to live!," were brutally suppressed by Hamas's security forces and militiamen.

Such calls by human rights organizations are dismissed out of hand by Hamas leaders, whose only concern is the iron grip of their power.

Hamas, after 13 years of criminal negligence, rejects responsibility for the wellbeing of its people. Astoundingly, it continues to succeed in convincing the world that Israel is to blame for the misery of its own people. This convenient and toxic lie enables it to continue receiving money and weapons from its friends in Iran and Hezbollah to tighten its death grip on the Gaza Strip.

For Hamas, jihad (holy war), not a decent life for its people, is what matters. Tragically, it seems that young Palestinians in Gaza are getting the message -- loud and clear.

For anyone who has followed Farrakhan's hate-filled career — praising Hitler, calling Jews termites, calling Judaism a gutter religion, attacking gays — the content of any Farrakhan speech comes as no surprise.

Farrakhan — like Nazis and Communists — has a First Amendment right to tell his lies and spread his hate. But no media has an obligation to promote or disseminate his bigotry.

Nor does it demand silence from responsible Black and Muslim leaders, whose voices should be heard condemning Farrakhan's devaluation of Jewish lives, gay lives, and the lives of people suffering from Covid-19.

Under the principles espoused in Brandenburg v Ohio and other leading cases, "advocacy" of violence is constitutionally protected but not "incitement " to "Imminent lawless action." The line between advocacy and incitement has not always been easy to draw.

"Trump came to office with minimal knowledge of the outside world, just impressions and emotions. He also lacked a philosophy or a network.... Fortunately, some of Trump's instincts are solid, for example, as concerns China, Iran, Israel, and Venezuela, and he does not get intimidated by the Establishment consensus." — Daniel Pipes.

"Antisemitism long ago moved in the main from the Right to the Left; Jeremy Corbyn has no conservative counterpart. These days, mainstream conservative parties are more philosemitic than antisemitic. Leftists keep trying to turn conservatives like Victor Orbán into antisemites but that is silly." — Daniel Pipes.

"But that improvement [of the position of Christians and Jews in the Muslim world] lasted only so long as the Europeans remained. When they left, the status of Jews and Christians fell far below what it had traditionally been. About 95% of Jews that lived in Muslim-majority countries have already fled; Christians are not far behind." — Daniel Pipes.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) ignores that there may be a context and a reason for "portraying newcomers as a threat to security". It does not consider the proliferation of Islamic terrorism in Europe or research showing that terrorists have migrated into Europe disguised as asylum seekers, who have gone on to perpetrate deadly terrorist attacks.

"According to the study, six of the 16 mosque associations examined (37.5%) pursue 'a policy that actively impedes integration into society and to some extent exhibits fundamentalist tendencies.' Half of the 16 mosques examined 'preach a dichotomous worldview, the pivotal tenet of which is the division of the world into Muslims on one side, and everyone else on the other.' Six of the mosques were found to practice 'explicit denigration of Western society'."

None of this context exists for ECRI, which appears to operate in a vacuum, unencumbered by real world facts.

Instead, ECRI commends Austria for having "several measures in place... which aim to combat hate speech by developing a counter-narrative."

William Perry's proposals, in his new book, The Button, (1) ignore the current Russian and Chinese nuclear threats, (2) widely exaggerate the costs of US nuclear modernization and (3) would actually so upset the nuclear balance as to make a nuclear attack on the US more likely.

For some strange reason, Perry does not ask for cuts from Russia or China, perhaps heralding a new faith-based arms control strategy? Both countries are completing massive nuclear modernization build-ups. Putin's defense minister announced Russia's nuclear modernization would be nearly 90% complete by the end of 2020, while China is on pace to double its nuclear forces by 2030.

At its peak, then, the complete nuclear enterprise would amount to 6-7% of the defense budget to modernize, operate and maintain, while modernization alone would be 3%. This still is some one-third of what it was at the height of the Cold War, when the US economy was far smaller and the defense budget a fraction of what it is today.

As soon as the US eliminates its ICBM force, Russia and China will get back in the business of seeking to disarm the United States, one top admiral reminded Gatestone.

In the new defense bill, the administration and Congress are building better missile defenses, including space-based sensors, and advanced national and regional systems. Combined with the newly initiated discussions in Geneva with the Russians on arms control measures, the US is on the right path.

"We see corruption everywhere. Is the Palestinian Authority headed towards self-destruction? Or is it just destroying the [Palestinian] people so that its own sons and relatives can rise to power?" — Nadia Harhash, journalist, who awoke on June 1, 2020 to find her car being torched, raialyoum.com.

Instead of heeding the call of the Palestinian Coalition for Accountability and Integrity and many Palestinians to end nepotism and ensure accountability and transparency, the PA has chosen to remain silent.

Thanks to the criminal negligence of the international community and the so-called human rights organizations, however, the Palestinian Authority leadership can simply continue to pursue its policy of deadly intimidation against Palestinian journalists. These groups are much too busy drafting condemnations of Israel to have time left over to expose the true Palestinian menace: the Palestinian Authority.

The Iranian regime has been involved in assassinations, terror plots, and terrorist attacks in more than 40 countries.

While the Iranian regime continues its assassinations and terrorist plots in the West, the EU and the UN -- which it is time for the US to defund -- remain silent.

For the intersectional activists, the US is the world's biggest oppressor -- not China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.

"What the media do not tell you is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist". — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Twitter, June 9, 2020.

"The new anti-racism is racism disguised as humanism (...) It implies that every white person is bad... and that every black person is a victim". — Abnousse Shalmani, born in Tehran, now living in Paris, to Le Figaro, June 12, 2020.

"America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East". — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2020.

It is high time for the United States to stop funding the United Nations.... The United Nations is now being used to perpetuate injustice, not stop it.

Real slave traders and racists -- those who believe Western societies and values should not exist at all -- most likely look at the current Western self-flagellation and cheer their approval.

Dozens of Protestant Christian families, according to the Association of Protestant Churches, have been asked to leave Turkey or have not been allowed to enter the country -- all based on trumped-up charges, such as "being a threat to national security".

"According to the court, Turkey's intelligence agency has a classified file on me that even our lawyer has been unable to review. According to this file, I am considered a threat to public order and security despite the fact that there is no legal complaint or court action against me." — Carlos Madrigal, spiritual leader, the Istanbul Protestant Church Foundation.

"Are Turkish citizens who are Protestant Christians next?" — Association of Protestant Churches.

Of the 5,400 streets in greater Paris, 287 are named after persons or events with colonial, imperial, or ideological bearings that clash with political correctness, the fashionable ideology of champagne and caviar leftists.

Paris is dotted with old buildings, museums, offices, barracks, schools and exhibition sites associated with events that would anger the politically correct.

Black Americans are under-represented. Martin Luther King has a park in a down-market neighborhood. But he wasn't BLM enough. He emphasized equal citizenship, not skin color.

Ah! Rewriting history!

Caught in the Davy Jones locker room, a civilization may dream of ... a device to reel back the past like a film and edit it as you please.

The German government's new report flies in the face of major EU reports... German statistics on anti-Semitism have been the object of criticism for quite some time.

"The majority of [anti-Semitism] cases in Berlin are attributed to right-wing extremists -- without evidence..." — Die Welt, May 7, 2019.

"For a long time, experts have criticized the attribution of the majority of cases to far-right perpetrators... and that too little attention is paid to other groups of perpetrators, such as those from Islamist and other Muslim circles". — Die Welt, May 7, 2019.

Yet, despite problematic evidence and flawed statistics, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is still claiming that virtually all anti-Semitism comes from the far-right. Why?

Despite all these measures, anti-Semitic crime in Germany is the highest it has been in the past two decades. This news alone should raise concerns in Germany that hate-speech laws such as the NetzDG, while severely limiting free speech, are not working. It should also concern other EU countries, such as France, that are looking to Germany as an example to follow.