In this mailing: Raymond Ibrahim: The Severed Head of Santa Claus: The Persecution of Christians, December 2021 Amir Taheri: Russia and Ukraine: The Sword and the Shield The Severed Head of Santa Claus: The Persecution of Christians, December 2021 by Raymond Ibrahim  •  January 30, 2022 Days before Christmas, on December 17, a Muslim cleric told his congregation, following mosque prayers, that wishing non-Muslims a Merry Christmas is "like congratulating murderers and pedophiles" — Breitbart.com, December 23, 2021, Canada. The imam concluded by calling on Allah to "give strength to Islam and Muslims, to humiliate infidels and polytheists, to destroy the enemies of (our) religion and to annihilate heretics and atheists." — Breitbart.com, December 23, 2021, Canada. "Get lost, this [France] is not your country...." — Muslims confronting a Catholic procession, Medforth.biz, December 11, 2021, Nanterre, France. After decapitating a Christian pastor, Islamic State-linked Muslims handed the pastor's severed head to his widow and ordered her to deliver it to the police. — Daily Mail, December 17, Mozambique. "The [ISIS-linked] group... forced younger, healthy-looking, and lighter-skinned women and girls in their custody to 'marry' their fighters, who enslave and sexually abuse them." — Human Rights Watch, December 7, 2021, Mozambique. "Quranic texts are not the only way to teach Arabic in schools. There are other methods such as literature, poetry and rhetoric.... The government always backs down from any removal of Quranic texts in school curricula or the subject of religion, fearing attacks and criticism by extremist groups." — Isaac Hanna, journalist and head of the Egyptian Association for Enlightenment, Al Monitor, December 15, 2021, Egypt. On December 31, unknown vandals defaced Istanbul's Kadıköy Protestant Church by writing "Allah 1" on its door. The church is just the latest of several in Istanbul alone to be desecrated in recent years. On May 8, 2020, a man tried to burn the entrance door of Surp Asdvadzadzni Armenian Church in Istanbul (pictured), which had been repeatedly attacked with hate-filled graffiti, among other desecrations. (Image source: Vmenkov/Wikimedia Commons) Hate for Christmas; Violence against Christians The Islamic State: As always happens before the festive Christmas season, professional Islamic terrorists sought to incite Muslims to launch "lone wolf" attacks on Christians. On December 20, the ISIS-operated Rocket.Chat communication platform posted a drawing of a veiled jihadist brandishing a bloody knife in one hand while holding the severed head of Santa Claus in the other. Messages on the platform included: "With the advent of the so-called polytheistic celebrations that the unbelievers are experiencing these days, we send a message to our monotheist brothers in Europe, America, Australia, Canada, Russia, and other countries of unbelief and apostasy.... Attack the citizens of crusader coalition countries with your knives, run them over in the streets, detonate bombs on them, and spray them with bullets." Continue Reading Article Russia and Ukraine: The Sword and the Shield by Amir Taheri  •  January 30, 2022 at 4:00 am       Putin's propaganda tries to portray NATO as the putative invader. At the same time, he makes much of Russia's money out of selling oil and gas to NATO members in Europe who, in turn, allow his money to be nested in their banks. Putin tries to pose as a potential victim of a non-existent aggression. Putin seems to be dreaming of a cordon sanitaire for Russia, one that is more of a cultural-political shield rather than a glacis in military terms. He wants Russia surrounded by Finlandized countries from China to the Caspian Basin, the Middle East and East and Central Europe. Rather than threatening invasion, Putin should try to make his Russia so attractive that Ukrainians and others wish to choose it as a model rather than looking to old Western democracies. That, however, means that Russia must change and deal with its centuries-long identity crisis between European aspirations and Asiatic fears. Rather than threatening invasion, Putin should try to make his Russia so attractive that Ukrainians and others wish to choose it as a model rather than looking to old Western democracies. Pictured: The Kyiv Territorial Defense unit trains in a forest on January 22, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) By the time you read this article, Russian troops may have entered Ukraine or even captured its capital Kiev in a blitzkrieg that would have made Field Marshal von Paulus green with envy. Or, maybe you would witness nothing but more sabre rattling by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two contrasting possibilities, even if one is closer to a probability, illustrate the fact that no one knows what Putin, the consummate poker player keeping his cards close to his chest, has in mind. At the risk of ending up with egg on my face, I belong to the group who think there would be no full-scale invasion. To back that assertion one could cite three reasons. Continue Reading Article