by WorldTribune Staff, December 24, 2017
The Islamization of Christmas in 2017 has become evident throughout Europe, an analyst said.
Multicultural political and religious elites “are bending over backwards to secularize Christmas, ostensibly to ensure that Muslims will not be offended by the Christian festival,” wrote Soeren Kern, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
“The re-theologizing of Christmas is based on the false premise that the Jesus of the Bible is the Jesus (Isa) of the Koran,” Kern wrote. “This religious fusion, sometimes referred to as ‘Chrislam,’ is gaining ground in a West that has become biblically illiterate.”
In Britain, the All Saints Church in Kingston upon Thames recently held a joint birthday celebration for Jesus and Mohammed.
To “project a multicultural veneer of secular tolerance,” Kern noted, traditional Christmas markets have been renamed – Amsterdam Winter Parade, Brussels Winter Pleasures, Kreuzberger Wintermarkt, London Winterville, Munich Winter Festival.
In France, the annual Christmas market in the Croix-Rousse district of Lyon was canceled because of security costs associated with protecting the event from Islamic terror.
Meanwhile, Germany opened five times as many terror investigations this year compared to 2016, the Tagesschau newspaper reported on Dec. 23.
Authorities launched around 1,200 investigations involving suspected terrorism acts throughout the year. Some 1,000 of them had an Islamist background.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) recently said around 24,400 Islamists are active in the country.
BKA chief Holger Munch told daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau in July that the danger from the far-right and far-left is minor compared to threats posed by jihadists.
“In the left-wing scene, the [German] states have currently estimated a number that can be counted on the fingers of one hand (Munch said). In the right-wing scene, the number is in the low double digits”
In his report, Kern noted several instances in Germany and elsewhere in Europe of terror threats at Christmas-themed areas and other assaults on long-time Christmas traditions.
In Berlin, this year’s traditional Christmas market was protected by walls of concrete barriers to prevent a repeat of last year’s jihadist attack in which 12 people were killed and more than 50 injured.
In Stuttgart, a 53-year-old man was arrested at the Christmas market after he claimed to be carrying a bomb in his backpack. In Potsdam, the Christmas market was closed after a nearby pharmacy received a letter bomb. In Bonn, the Christmas market was evacuated due to a bomb threat.
In the German city of Luneburg, a school postponed a Christmas party after a Muslim student complained that the singing of Christmas carols during school was incompatible with Islam. Alexander Gauland, the leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, said the school’s action was “an unbearable, involuntary submission to Islam” and amounted to a “cowardly injustice” toward non-Muslim children.
In Munich, ads for a multicultural “winter market” depicted a snowman covered in a burqa. The chairman of the AfD in Bavaria, Petr Bystron, noted the irony: “A burqa snowman as a tolerance symbol?” In Halle, the Christmas market was renamed “Wintermarket.”
In Italy, a school in Milan removed references to Christmas at a party and renamed the holiday as “The Great Festival of Happy Holidays.”
In Norway, a primary school in Skien announced that its Christmas festivities this year would include not only the usual reading by pupils of verses from the Bible but also two verses from the Koran which refer to Jesus.
In Spain, the Madrid City Council replaced Christmas festivities in the capital with a neo-Pagan “International Fair of the Cultures.” The Madrid city hall also refused to place a nativity scene at the Puerta de Alcalá, one of the city’s most iconic monuments. Local politician José Luis Martínez-Almeida accused Mayor Manuela Carmena of “enthusiastically collaborating in the celebration of Ramadan” but “trying to hide all the Christian symbols of Christmas.”
In London, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, a parliamentary group composed of members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, issued a report, “A Very Merry Muslim Christmas,” aimed at drawing attention to the “humanity” of Muslims during Christmas.
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