Survey: More than half of Poland’s teens search anti-Semitic, pro-Hitler websites

Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, October 2014

The survey, which was conducted by the Warsaw University Center for Research on Prejudice, also found that 14 percent of the survey participants acknowledged that racist hate speech was common in Poland.

Over half of Poland’s young people access anti-Semitic Internet sites that praise Hitler and Nazism, the Fox News website reported, citing a Warsaw University study.

The results of the survey were presented to the Polish parliament earlier this month, reviving attention to hate speech legislation and sparking concern among members of the small remaining Polish Jewish community.
The survey, which was conducted by the Warsaw University Center for Research on Prejudice, also found that 14 percent of the survey participants acknowledged that racist hate speech was common in Poland.
Fully 21 percent of young people polled and 19 percent of Polish adult participants in the survey opposed the banning of hate speech, however. “What is most important for me is that so many young people accept hate speech,” the center’s director, Michael Bilewicz, told FoxNews.com in a telephone interview.

“In fact, more than adults. And the young are the future of Poland.” Bilewicz said the courts in Poland are failing to enforce laws against hate speech, which in turn makes the problem worse. “Judges must maintain the fine balance between protecting free speech and banning rhetoric designed to incite hate,” he said. Bilewicz, who co-authored the study and is an assistant professor at Warsaw University, said that the poll surveyed 653 Polish young people between the ages of 16 and 18 and also polled a group of 1,007 adults.

“Contrary to what might be expected, it is the young who often display anti-democratic and xenophobic attitudes on a mass scale today,” Rafal Pankowsi, a political science professor at Warsaw’s Collegium Civitas, said.

But Holocaust survivor Sigmund Rolat, a major benefactor of the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, countered that, as he sees it, Jews live a safer existence and are more well-accepted in Poland than in Western Europe. The new opinion survey, the report says, overly emphasized the views of a bigoted minority.
But an earlier survey of Warsaw high school students also seems to reflect substantial prejudice against Jews on the part of Polish young people. The poll, released in April by the same Warsaw University institute, found that 44 percent of the students did not even want a Jewish neighbor.

The school that says Osama Bin Laden was hero

By Mobeen Azhar

A boy at the Red Mosque

A hardline cleric in Pakistan is teaching the ideas of Osama Bin Laden in religious schools for about 5,000 children. Even while the Pakistani government fights the Taliban in the north-west of the country, it has no plans to close schools educating the next generation of pro-Taliban jihadis.

“We share the same objectives as the Taliban but we don’t offer military training. We work on minds. The Taliban are more hands-on,” says Abdul Aziz Ghazi, imam of Islamabad’s controversial Red Mosque.

“We teach about the principles of jihad. It’s up to students if they want to get military training after they leave here. We don’t discourage them.”

Ghazi runs eight seminaries – madrassas as they are known – the first of which was founded after his father went on a journey to meet Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

“Osama Bin Laden is a hero for us all. He stood up to America and he won. He inspired the mission of the school,” says Ghazi.

In one of the seminaries, the library is named in honour of Bin Laden, who was killed by US Navy Seals in Pakistan in 2011.

Ghazi, his mosque and his seminaries, have come a long way since 2007, when the Pakistani army was sent to lay siege to the radical mosque, and later stormed it. The events left 100 dead, including many militants, and Ghazi’s younger brother, mother and son.

Abdul Aziz Ghazi

Ghazi himself became known as the “Burka Mullah” after he was caught trying to escape wearing a woman’s face veil and robe as a disguise.

Now 3,000 girls and 2,000 boys are studying at his institutions.

The syllabus is a heavy mix of Koranic recitation, Arabic and theology. Science, maths and arts are seen as “worldly” and barely feature. Many of the schools core texts have been written by Ghazi and printed within the seminaries’ own printing room. The shortest courses are 12 months long but students can also enrol in an eight-year programme that delivers imam status upon graduation.

“The Taliban ran Afghanistan very well. They created a just society that was the envy of the world,” says 24-year-old Abdullah who will graduate from the imam school next year.

He too cites Osama Bin Laden as his inspiration. His interpretation of Islam recommends stoning, public executions and limited access to education for women.

“We all have the same aim – to create a society in which there is no corruption. We want justice for everyone. The only way to achieve that is through Sharia law and an Islamic state,” he says.

Abdullah is one of 18 imams who will graduate from the school in 2015, in order to carry these ideas into communities across Pakistan.

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