This is VilleUrbanne, France, close to Lyon, last Friday. The film was made by Rebeyne!, a French identitarian group affiliated with the Bloc Identitaire.

Each Friday it’s the same thing: dozens of vehicles invade the district, hundreds of Muslims take possession of the streets and set themselves up to pray around an undeclared Koran school. Infuriated by the disturbance, shocked by these weekly shows of force, the inhabitants of the Saint-Jean district of Villeurbanne have tried in vain to alert the public authorities. Town hall, prefecture, police, no one has deigned to respond to them and intervene to put an end to this intolerable situation. Desperate, the local residents contacted us last month to inform us of the situation. Rebeyne! thus turned up on the spot to film the incredible. Muslim Street Occupations Continue in France

Mona Eltahawy: »Yes. They hate us. It must be said.. «

In “Distant View of a Minaret,” the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband’s repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, “as though purposely to deprive her.” Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer — so much more satisfying that she can’t wait until the next prayer — and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. “She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was,” Rifaat writes.

In a crisp three-and-a-half pages, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it. They don’t hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says. – Yes: They hate us. It must be said……… MONA ELTAHAWY Why Do They Hate Us?The real war on women is in the Middle East.

Igen og igen og igen …

” – Den forurettede, en 19-årig mand, bliver passet op af 4-5 gerningsmænd, der truer ham med en pistol, forklarer Kristian Aaskov. Mindst én af gerningsmændene hiver herefter en kniv frem og stikker det 19-årige offer fem gange. – Han bliver stukket i ballerne og området omkring ballerne. Så han har aldrig været i livsfare, lyder meldingen.”

Og videre:

Natten til søndag fandt endnu et knivstikkeri sted i København. Denne gang på Peblinge Dossering, hvor en 35-årig mand blev stukket tre gange af ukendte gerningsmænd. Også han er uden for livsfare. – De to episoder har ikke forbindelse til hinanden, siger efterforskningsleder Emil Jensen. EB

Det er efterhånden svært at finde en berettigelse for at dække den slags ting i disse spalter. Det er blevet trivielt, i og med at det sker ustandselig, men sagen er, at ingen overhovedet beder om en forklaring på at det sker? Hvad er motivet? Hvad er meningen? Jeg er gammel nok til at huske en tid, hvor ethvert knivstikkeri ville have ryddet forsiderne, og hvor det var helt uhørt at almindelige småkriminelle gik rundt og viftede med en pistol. Det var også dengang, hvor en røver ikke anvendte mere vold end strengt nødvendigt for at tilegne sig offerets ejendele, og hvor gerningsmanden i de fleste tilfælde handlede alene.

I disse to tilfælde drejer det sig tilsyneladende ikke om røveri, og det er da også svært at forstå, at 4-5 mennesker vil gøre sig skyldig i så relativt grov en forbrydelse for de værdier en tilfældig 19-årig måtte bære rundt på. Heller ikke i tilfældet med den 35-årige var det et røveri. Og de to sager er angiveligt ikke relaterede.

Så hvad hulen sker der i lille Dannevang? Vi har små grupper af bevæbnede mænd gående omkring, bare for at true tilfældige, enlige yngre mænd. I disse to tilfælde stikker de med en kniv, men tydeligvis ikke for at dræbe eller skade alvorligt. Det kan kun handle om at true, at indgyde frygt – i visse cirkler kaldet ’respekt’. Det minder meget om de mange gaderøverier i fremgangsmåde, men det overfladiske motiv – røveriet – er faldet væk, og det er jo godt nok, for så kan vi se det som det er. Det her er dominanskriminalitet. ’Nogen’ vil fortælle os, at de har viljen og våbnene til at tage magten i gaderne, og at vi andre skal kende vores plads.
– Af Nemo