News Why Hasn’t This Woman Been Deported?
posted by on May 28 at 15:32 PM
Not from the U.S., but from freaking Belgium? From today’s NYT:
Al Qaeda Warrior Uses Internet to Rally WomenBRUSSELS—On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes.
In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair…. But it is on the Internet where Ms. El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name “Oum Obeyda,” she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe.
She calls herself a female holy warrior for Al Qaeda. She insists that she does not disseminate instructions on bomb-making and has no intention of taking up arms herself. Rather, she bullies Muslim men to go and fight and rallies women to join the cause.
“It’s not my role to set off bombs—that’s ridiculous,” she said in a rare interview. “I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.”
Ms. El Aroud has not only made a name for herself among devotees of radical forums where she broadcasts her message of hatred toward the West. She also is well known to intelligence officials throughout Europe as simply “Malika”—an Islamist who is at the forefront of the movement by women to take a larger role in the male-dominated global jihad.
This kind of shit drives me bonkers—Ms. El Aroud hates the West? That’s grand. Whatever—that’s her right. Hell, there are some things I hate about the West. But if you hate the West so much, Ms. El Aroud, then what the fuck out are you doing in the West? Go. You’re not nailed you to the floor in Belgium. Let’s make a deal: You were born in Morocco. So you go back to Morocco and we’ll bring someone over that actually wants to live in the West. Perhaps a Moroccan lesbian. But if you long to live under sharia (you say you do), then maybe you should pick a shithole country somewhere—Saudia Arabia, Nigeria, Gambia, Iran—where Islamists hold power and go and fucking live and blog from there.
But here’s the detail that really made my head explode:
That system often has been lenient toward her. She was detained last December with 13 others in what the authorities suspected was a plot to free a convicted terrorist from prison and to launch an attack in Brussels…. Now, even as Ms. El Aroud remains under constant surveillance, she is back home rallying militants on her main Internet forum and collecting more than $1,100 a month in government unemployment benefits.
Belgium, for crying out loud, you’re paying this woman unemployment benefits so that she can sit in her apartments and encourage people to blow up Belgians? Are you out of your minds?
Oh, Dan. I agree 100%. For real. I'm for religious freedom. Really, I am. But when your religious freedom involves cloaking your non-Muslim neighbors in cloth and enforcing Sharia law? Yeah, I'm not so much in favor of that. Lordy.
In other news, I need another Manhattan.
Is this the parts of european government we should be adopting.
In 3...2...1.... somebody is going to come on here and call you intolerant or racist.
Kick the bitch out, and the rest of those fucks.
it's called rule of law...love it or hate it
Golly. You'd think a guy who was Editor-in-Chief of Seattle's Only Self-Congratulatorily Smug Newspaper for a decade or so would have learned the real (i.e., Muslim POV) meaning of the word "jihad" by now.
“ 'It’s not my role to set off bombs—that’s ridiculous,' she said in a rare interview. 'I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.' ”
What she said, Savage. What she actually said.
Thank you Dan for mentioning this! I read this article yesterday, and it drove me crazy.
But even worse, why didn't the reporter ask her about these glaringly obvious hypocrisies? Her beliefs and actions seemed to be so at odds with each other and yet the reporter just let it slide right by without asking her one damn interesting question. I want answers!
Ah, Savage finally invokes the "Belgium: Love It or Leave It" argument. It was only a matter of time. I blame Andrew Sullivan.
Maybe her ISP's TOS doesn't have rules against what she does or they don't care. There's plenty of people here too who tell others to commit violence against others and I'd bet some of them are on unemployment. Where do we send Americans who act like that? I wish they'd throw the old bat from my apartment building out on the street with the way she acts about certain people she hates.
Throw her out, throw them ALL out I say! Even the stupid Belgian jihadist ones.
Est-ce que nous devons-nous se déplacer en Belgique, patrie de Hercule Poirot, où nous, aussi, pouvons rassembler nos $1.100 mensuels tout en blogging au sujet de combien nous détestons des religions et des gouvernements accablants ?
(Shall we shall move to Belgium, homeland of Hercule Poirot, where we, too, can collect our monthly $1,100 while blogging about how much we dislike oppressive religions and governments?)
"But if you hate the West so much, Ms. El Aroud, then what the fuck out are you doing in the West?"
Probably the same reason certain brands of fundies like to go live among the heathens and teach them about xianity.
stupid fat Belgian bastards...
Dumbfcuks!
Ah. Isn't this the same Dan Savage who previously got all the facts wrong with the alleged "murder" of the patient who was "denied" a transplant at UW?
Ever been to Belgium, Dan? It appears they don't have a Guantánamo Bay. But hey, that's just what I heard.
Oh, wait. Hold on. Maybe they're hiding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Gather the troops! Time for an invasion!
The reason she hasn't been deported is that she is Belgian. Which part of that is not clear? Belgium is her country.
She's kind of an interesting character. Spunky, you know? Doesn't like the Burqa, wanted to fight in Chechnya. The thing that has kept her out of jail is lack of evidence and dumb luck, although she seems to want to get sent to jail.
I think she's a bungler and anybody who touches her with a 10 foot pole might as well walk around with a sign saying "Kick me I'm a terrorist." They will probably catch more of them keeping her under surveillance than making her a "living martyr."
BTW... Sullivan is such a tool. Don't listen to people like him.
dan, she has not been deported because she is a citizen of belgium. a crazy, loony citizen of belgium. deporting her would also have to deport its skin head citizens and all other loons, but nobody is obligated to take them for they are belgium's problem. its not doable , unless of course youre only advocating that belgium deport its brown lunatic citizens and not its white lunatic citizens. if thats the case than you need to be a wee more clear.
she is probably being followed by half the interpol along with every security force in europe, if anything she gives them intellegence on who is going on her site and who is saying what. i doubt that they consider her much of a threat. she sounds crazier than those calling for the invasion of iran. most of those people are put on secret flights and flown to countries where they are tortured for years, but i reckon thats not sullivan worthy.
oh and nigeria is only ruled by muslims in certain regions, most of it is christian( whatever that means)
your inner sullivan strikes again.
She's entitled to say and think what she pleases. Its a free country. Once she breaks a law, she'll be investigated, tried, and possibly found guilty and sentenced. Doesn't matter how much you disagree with her, it's not illegal to have opinions.
She is a hypocrite though.
sorry, tons of typos. oh well. deport me.
She seems pretty fucking smart, and from what I read in the article a Belgian citizen, which makes the headline on this post seem a little, um, ignorant?
Seriously, there has been so much anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe that I don't think the Belgian gov't would let her off if they actually had something on her. So are people pissed because she is clearly a smart, articulate woman who uses her free speech rights to promote Islam instead of some Western-approved ideology? Personally I am more offended and frightened by what the crazy xtians write and say all the time in the good ol' U.S. of A. Dan, I really appreciate it when you post news about what the xtian-right fundies are up to; this NYT article was a lot of hype in my opinion and not worthy of slog.
Of course, there could be a BCLU that is defending her rights to plant bombs in Belgium: ACLU Defends Nazis' Right To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters
I'm more frightened that the government of belgium subsidizes the encouragement of terrorism implicitly.
Shouldn't she be stoned for talking to men or something?
funny how Dan's slogging day started with a lucid post on gay marriage rights and now he's moved on to boilerplate reactionary europe-and-muslim-bashing.
This makes me so mad I want to go to Moe Bar and party down tomorrow night with the Washington Bus ...
Meanwhile small kids are boarding our planes for Texas.
What is she doing in Belgium?
She's waging a demographic war against the West. Maybe not consciously, but these Islamist retards are prodigiously outbreeding the Belgian natives... it's only a matter of time before we need to start grouping Belgium with the other islamofascist states. Unless, of course, the Belgians collectively grow a spine and stand up for their culture before it's overwhelmed.
Moral relativism, like all other things, should be practiced in moderation.
To 13, 18 and others. Especially 5, with that oh-so-cute reminder that "jihad" means "struggle".
Granted, when people use the phrase "words are also bombs", they have the right to be interpreted metaphorically. When a *self-confessed memeber of Al-Qaeda* links her statements to bombs, that doesn't mean simply "subversive", that means... B O M B S. Real, blowing-people-up bombs.
This woman is an agent for an enemy power, which repeatedly stresses the fact that they are in an armed, unremitting struggle with "The West": they keep on having to say it louder, because liberals never seem to believe them, but they do actually believe it. There is material evidence that she is encouraging armed sedition -probably involving violence against non-combatants - against her own country and its allies, and that she is giving material aid and comfort to the enemy. Bring her up on a treason charge, because, as ya'll so nicely point out, she *is* a citizen.
@5
...would have learned the real (i.e., Muslim POV) meaning of the word "jihad"...
Yeah, "jihad" means something different to Arabic speaking Muslims. But seeing as how Dan was using it in a post written to an audience of English-speaking infidels, I think we can agree to use the Western definition of the word:
jihad (n): A campaign of terror waged against anybody who disagrees with your narrow fundamentalist world-view
If you have a problem with that definition, maybe you should focus your energy on reigning in militant Islam instead of on taking offense at perceived misuse of a word.
@25
Dan didn't use the word... Ms. El Aroud used it. But the point is still well made.
23: You're a bigot and a scumbag, no better than the person you're condemning.
And moreover, who the fuck are you to speak on behalf of Belgian culture? Love it or leave it is a two way street; if you care so much about Belgian politics, why don't you move there?
BTW: Thanks for deleting my post calling your politics into question, Dan. At least your beliefs about censorship are consistent.
@29; it's possible it's not deleted: each time I view this page, I find posts I hadn't seen before (yes, very funny, I mean in the *middle*), so it may just be the site playing up.
Also, is it possible 23 is being sarcastic?
The problem with the west is it doesn't STAY in the west, i.e. McDonalds, Walmart, consumerism in general, oh and occupying armies.
@27,28
23: You're a bigot and a scumbag, no better than the person you're condemning.
While your eloquence and debate skills are clearly of the highest degree, you seem to have missed the point.
I'm not condemning a person, I'm condemning an ideology. Specifically, I'm condemning militant fundamentalist Islamism because it aggressively seeks to subjugate the rest of the world to its cruel and barbaric value system.
You're right, though, that I am technically a bigot --- I'm intolerant of the beliefs of others when those beliefs advocate the destruction of the hard-fought gains made by civilization in the past thousand years.
I just think that's a bad idea and shouldn't be encouraged by politically correct cowards who refuse to judge anything at all. Tolerance cannot tolerate its own destruction, otherwise it's pointless.
Anecdote:
I was traveling through Brussels in 2001 with a female friend. One evening we inadvertently wandered through an immigrant neighborhood. We passed a basketball court, and the thirty or so teenagers inside - all male - stopped playing to stare at her through the chainlink fence as we passed. That's a scary fucking feeling, and I don't want the rest of the world to become like that or worse.
Chilling story, meh. Deeply, deeply, deeply chilling.
32: I'm quite capable of eloquence, I just don't use it when I'm trolling forums.
I believe that pluralism, multiculturalism and freedom of speech are bedrocks of liberal democracy. Intolerance is a challenge to these ideas and a difficult one to navigate; however, once you start picking and choosing which ideologies are suitable to sacrifice in the name of these "western" ideals, you've already effectively killed them. By saying we must sacrifice these tenets to save "western" civilization is to say that the western world is already dead. In essence, you're saying we're not up to the challenges free speech, multiculturalism and pluralism, and by extension liberal democracy, pose. You're cynical about the very things the West is supposed to stand for. So while your anecdote is indeed chilling, it's just that, and anecdote, and not an effective basis for arguing that Europe should start deporting people.
Also, while I personally think all the provocative anti-Islam cartoons coming out of Denmark and the Netherlands are stupid and designed to provoke outrage, I fully support the right of those artists to present those works and publishers to print them.
The tale you tell is scary one, but the idea of an authoritarian Europe that tells everyone what to think and feel on pain of exile is far more nightmarish and real to me than the fantasy of a crescent rising over Belgium.
@23,
I don't have a lot of love for fundamentalists of any stripe, but you're incorrect about demographics. Israelis are at risk of being outnumbered by Palestinians. Belgians are not. There simply aren't enough Muslims immigrating to the country. Over time, as they get assimilated and as they become more successful, those immigrants' birthrates will drop and stabilize.
Anyway, isn't El Aroud a Belgian citizen? It's a little difficult to revoke someone's citizenship. And, truthfully, I'd rather she stay in Belgium, where maybe the authorities can find a reason to arrest and prosecute her. Morocco is trying to secularize. They don't need assholes like her returning to try to stir up trouble.
I agree 100%, Dan.
People have no problem calling a KKK member a scumbag, but when it's an Islamic fundamentalist with equally abhorrent views all of the sudden we're bigots? Why, because she has dark skin or because it's her religion?
Belgian chocolate.
It's good.
Belgian jihad.
It's bad.
... nuff said.
38: The KKK are scumbags and so is this lady. But I don't necessarily think white supremacist groups should be banned or deported either- I'd rather have them embarrassing themselves in the light of day than festering in the underground or stirring trouble out of sight in a foreign country- I don't believe in exporting out problems but dealing with them head on with dialog, and in extreme cases, prison sentences.
Presumably the thing that distinguishes the West from the Islamic world are our freedoms. Freedom of speech and association are key among our freedoms.
If we take action against this tool for what she writes, how is that different from taking action against you for being an outspoken fag? All that is different is who is doing the judging about what is and isn't acceptable.
To the extent that she commits criminal acts, she should be punished. To the extent that she is inciting people to violence the question becomes how specific and imminent is the violence? "Go fight the Imperialist West!" is different from "Go bomb the Subway on 49th street."
It is easy to despise people like this woman. It is harder to retain our freedoms while defending them.
It's sad that this "how can we restrict the freedom of the intolerant" argument still gets trotted out in the case of jihadists.
J.S. Mill put the matter very clearly: if you say that corn sellers are exploiters of the poor, your speech should be defended absolutely. If you stand outside a corn sellers house with a torch, saying that corn sellers are exploiters of the poor and should be burnt in their beds, you should go to prison.
If a person says "Al Qaeda did a good thing on September 11", that's fine: we should protect that speech for all it's worth. If you say "Al Qaeda did a good thing on September 11, you other muslims need to man up and do the same, here's where to go and how to do it", that is clearly directly inciting harm.
There is really no conflict with liberal principles.
Sorry for double posting; I posted without seeing all of #41.
Obviously, Jim puts the issue just as I do, but in the context, "Go fight the Imperial West", in a situation in which people are obviously listening to her, seems to me to be a classic case of incitement to violence.
I'm not sure if effectiveness ought to be part of the proof of harm, but it certainly makes things easier... If nobody listens to the man outside the cornsellers house but nobody listens to him, should we arrest him? Who knows? But if they *do* listen to him, we should certainly arrest him.
Aaaargh. Sorry for the typos.
Hey if I want to read wingtard hate posts against Islam I'll go visit Little Green Footballs. Weak.
@45. That is, laugh all you want at Xtian fundamentalists, but try and laugh at muslim fundamentalist, who makes Christians look like Glastonbury hippies, and I'll block my ears.
Weak.
I don't know about Belgium but I know the US has laws against Inciting people to violence. Seems like trying to convince people to bomb innocents would count for that. I'd agree that if you're dead set on living under sharia law then there are plenty of places you can go to do that. On the other hand, if you're dead set to live in a place that allows gays to marry there are places you can go to do that too.
I have nothing against her trying to convince people that Sharia law is the way to go and that the west is run by the devil. Free speech and all that jazz. What I have a problem with is her suggesting that violence is the way to get there (I haven't heard any gay marriage proponents suggest that yet). That, and suggesting violence against the government while collecting free money from them.
"I write in a legal way,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. I’m Belgian. I know the system.”
As a Belgian, who is not too unfamiliar with the system herself, I believe that Ms. El Aroud nailed it here.
I hear that in Belgium, the bicycle jihad has already won!
Dan, I think one reason you find these people bitching from comfortable positions in Belgium, Germany, or Londonistan is because if they tried too much of their shit back where they came from,they'd get their asses kicked.
Well, that's just a figure of speech, make that, "tortured." In fact, a lot of this zany right wing Islamic extremism may have been born in the Egyptian prison sytem, under a torture regime. (I don't know enough about Egypt in the 50's - 70's, for all I know, they felt it was a necessary brtuality. Chicken/egg may go way back on this stuff.)
Oh, another reason she likes Belgium: She's a woman? Better deal in various ways. Maybe her brother holy warriors in Chechnya weren't keen on the idea of her bearing arms?
Bet they'd use her as a suicide bomber, but if she's not committed enough to the cause to voluntarily emigrate to a proper Muslim country (and reduce her standard of living), well, looks like she's really not committed enough to be a suicide bomber, or even take up arms. She's just running her yap on the keyboard. So far.
As everybody has pointed out, deportation would not apply to a Belgian citizen, but you are right in asking why she doesn't leave of her own accord, if it's such a horrible place.
This woman is a travesty. She, like all Islamofascists are hypocrites. They despise and denounce Western Culture, yet embrace the products that come from Western Civilization. Computers, automobiles, air-conditioning, central heating, airplanes, automatic firearms and the majority of medical advancements were developed and alowwed to flourish as a direct result of Western societies' democracy, capitalism and free market. Terrorists and those who support them seem to be unable to see the benefits that Western Civilization have brought them. They are also very willing to hide behind the freedoms granted by Western Values in order to spread their filth and hatred. How dare they shield themselves with our laws, while at the same time trying to eradicate those very same laws. Those that protect their rhetoric.
Western Countries need to wake up and realize that ISLAM IS THE ENEMY. Though I am not stating that all muslims (as individuals) are our foes, but rather the institution of Islam is in direct. violent, opposition to the values of Western Culture. We must recognize that those who use our freedoms to espouse their dangerous views must be stopped. They cannot be permitted to shield themselves behind 'freedom of speech' since their ultimate goal is the denial of free speech for all. We cannot allow political correctness to stay our hand in striking down those that want to destroy all we love and hold dear. Too many people died and suffered in the cause of freedom to allow that very same freedom to used as armor to undo what was so bitterly won.
There can be no more apoligists and excuse making. These monsters whose only goal is to yoke you to their twisted idealogy, do not care if you "see their point" or "understand why they are mad".
There comes a point when you must pick a side. There is no middle-ground. These people hate Westerners! If you prize freedom and choice; you must choose to be against them. They cannot be compared to the KKK or Christian Fundamentalists. Those groups are not trying to overthrow the greatest society on Earth. Those groups do not use suicide bombers to attack school children and shoppers. The Islamofascists do. The followers of Islamic doctrine seek to destroy and have no qualms about who is their way.
So you must decide where you stand. You either stand for freedom and personal choice, or you surrender to Islam and give up everything you are and everything you believe in. I choose freedom. And if it is neccessary to fight and kill muslims for that freedom so be it. If it means the overthrow of the mullahs in Iran to protect the futeure of my children, so be it. If it means war, to defend my way of life, then war it shall be. The Islamic Fascists have declared war on us, We must recognize the inevitable truth that we are under assault and ready ourselves for battle.
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