Author: Mick Hartley

They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.

“The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that’s a clear victory.

“It’s confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call ‘adverse consequences’ – violence to the rest of us – then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent.” […]

[O]ne of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.

‘Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion – and it is their aim to achieve this.

“That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future – and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.

“Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on.”

That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. “That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities – which will be backed up by the claim that it is “racist” or “Islamophobic” or “violating the rights of Muslims” to deny them sharia law.

“There’s already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions….

“The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government’s record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that.”

Great stuff from Nick Cohen:

Last week, I went to the East End of London to witness the death of the avant-garde. At first glance, Gilbert and George’s Sonofagod Pictures: Was Jesus Heterosexual?’ exhibition at the White Cube did not look like a wake. The bright and glistening gallery is in Hoxton, a corner of town that has been full of life since it was colonised and gentrified by ‘Young British Artists’ in the early Nineties. As fashionable visitors move between its loft conversions and cafes, ‘edgy’ is the highest compliment they can bestow and ‘taboo’ the gravest insult. Taboos are taboo in Hoxton.

Even on a wet Thursday lunchtime, there were plenty of sightseers from the metropolitan intelligentsia enjoying the show rather than mourning the passing of their world. In prose that might embarrass an estate agent, novelist Michael Bracewell told them in the catalogue that Gilbert and George were engaged ‘in rebellion, an assault on the laws and institutions of superstition and religious belief’.

Burbling critics agreed. Gilbert and George still get a ‘frisson of excitement’ by including ‘f-words, turds, semen, their own pallid bodies and other affronts to bourgeois sensibilities’ in their work, wrote a journalist with the impeccably bourgeois name of Cassandra Jardine in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Is it the perfect Christmas card to send George Bush at Easter? Yeah, yeah,’ added groovy Waldemar Januszczak of the Sunday Times

Their justifications for edgy art won’t work any longer and not only because the average member of the educated bourgeoisie likes nothing better than f-words and pallid bodies on a visit to the theatre or gallery. After the refusal of the entire British press to print innocuous Danish cartoons, the stench of death is in the air. It is now ridiculous and impossible to talk about a fearless disregard for easily offended sensibilities.

A damning look at the record of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA):

One of the largest humanitarian programs [in thge occupied territories] is the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). One-third of UNRWA’s $350 million annual budget is furnished by American taxpayers, and a little more than half comes from their European counterparts. UNRWA is unlike any other international agency. It was established in 1949 by the General Assembly to carry out relief programs benefiting Arabs displaced (some quite voluntarily) during the fighting that erupted after the new state of Israel was simultaneously invaded by its five Arab neighbors. (Remarkably, the UN offered no such succor to the numerous Jewish communities, some dating from biblical times, which were forcibly evicted from Arab countries.) Not only is UNRWA unique in its exclusive concern for original Palestinian “refugees” and their descendants (now numbering over 4 million according to the agency’s rather loose criteria), it is the only refugee services organization whose raison d’être is not to resettle its charges, but rather to keep them and their dependents in squalid temporary dwellings while they await their “right of return.”

The needless festering of grievance in the undeniably miserable 59 camps (27 of which are located in the West Bank and Gaza) is not UNRWA’s only flaw, however. Indeed, far from being an impartial dispenser of humanitarian relief, UNRWA has become an enabler of terrorists, complicit through sins of commission and omission, in the cycle of violence wracking the Middle East. […]

Over the years, the “educational” materials currently in use in UNRWA schools include the following:

Its tenth grade textbook History of the Contemporary and Modern World defines Zionism as “a racist ideology and political movement that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century” and informs its readers that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were “a group of confidential resolutions adopted by the [Basel Zionist] Congress…the goal of which is world domination.” [And we dare criticize Hamas’s Covenant?]

Readers of its fifth grade textbook Physical Geography, its tenth grade Geography of the World’s Continents, and other volumes with maps will search in vain for any mention of Israel.

The high school textbook Health and Environmental Sciences contains a unit entitled “The Racist Annexation and Separation Wall and Its Impact on Environment.”

The fourth grade reader Our Beautiful Language gives students this assignment: “Let us research and write [an essay] about one of the Palestinian martyr leaders [suicide bombers].”

From an interview with Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose:

When asked whether he regretted his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons, in light of the firestorm they unleashed in the Islamic world and threats against him, Flemming said it was like asking a rape victim whether she regretted wearing a short skirt.

Well that’s nice: clerics from Qom have issued what the Iranian internet daily Rooz calls “a new fatwa,” stating that “shari’a does not forbid the use of nuclear weapons.”

“The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of shari’a. Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. […]

Gharavian is a lecturer at the religious schools of Qom, and is a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi. In his recent remarks, he said for the first time that the use of nuclear weapons may not constitute a problem according to shari’a. He further said that ‘when the entire world is armed with nuclear weapons, it is permissible to use these weapons as a counter-[measure]. According to shari’a, too, only the goal is important…’

“[Gharavian] said that he sees no problem with the military use of nuclear weapons [sic]: ‘One must say that when the entire world is armed with nuclear weapons, it is only natural that, as a counter-measure, it is necessary to be able to use these weapons. However, what is important is what goal they may be used for.” […]

“Gharavian’s statement is the first public statement by the Mesbah Yazdi group on the nuclear issue. Until now, none of the top-ranking religious [leaders] have authorized, on religious grounds, the use of nuclear weapons. But now it seems that the ultra-[conservatives] in Iran have launched a new effort to prepare the religious grounds for use of these weapons…”

From the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, in what the Times calls a “blistering attack“:

‘The vote of the synod of the Church of England to ‘heed’ a call to divestment from certain companies associated with Israel was ill-judged even on its own terms. The immediate result will be to reduce the Church’s ability to act as a force for peace between Israel and the Palestinians for as long as the decision remains in force. The timing could not have been more inappropriate. Israel . . . needs support, not vilification.

And here (via Melanie Phillips) is an excellent editorial from an organ I link to for the first, and very possibly the last, time – The Church of England News:

No wonder many in the UK and Europe were distinctly queasy at this foray into international politics by the members of General Synod. Is this assembly really equipped to make judgements on such very complex problems? The motion would be better placed in a university or school debating chamber rather than a Church. What has emerged looks one-sided and simplistic, possibly hindering Israeli efforts to make a stable peace. Again, Synod has lived up to a reputation for shadowing the Guardian newspaper in its political orientation and preferred topics of condemnation. Has Synod pronounced on Zimbabwe, genocide in the Sudan, persecution and oppression in China and the Middle East? Indeed Anglican dignitaries rushed to the letters columns after the murderous attack on the ‘twin-towers’ on ‘9/11’ to exculpate the bombers by seeking the reasons for their hatred of the West. No great rush by our new-found experts on global politics to express exculpatory reasons for Israeli bulldozing is evident. If Synod wants to become a sort of amateur United Nations body, it might investigate the misuse of cash poured into the Palestinian Authority, maintaining abject poverty for many.

So, more apologies from Archbishop Rowan – which is admittedly what he does best.

David Aaronovitch on the smoking ban:

In a way it is astonishing that it has taken this long for smoking to be banned in restaurants; there are still places so foul from the stench and that make your eyes water so much, that I only have to enter the bloody door to know that this is not the joint for me.

In which case, you turn around and go elsewhere.

I did it to others for many years – fugged up their space for them – unable as I was to stop myself. I kicked the habit just in time to avoid being a pavement johnnie, and I’m grateful for that. So I do feel for present addicts (tho not for those who insist that they “enjoy” the habit – bollocks), and have havered between thinking there should be a public ban, and believing in segregation so that the benighted can choose to act madly.

Now the ban is here, though, I find it hard to regret it.

This Alcoholics Anonymous stuff – I was a sinner, hurting myself and others, but now I’ve seen the light – is all a bit over the top, isn’t it? Of course smoking’s enjoyable. If it was health-neutral, I’d still be puffing away, no problem. There’s something slightly offensive about that whole patronising approach – the assumption that smokers are pathetic addicts who are just fooling themselves when they claim they get pleasure out of it.

My point isn’t that there’s no truth in this. Of course there is. We know nicotine is addictive, never mind the whole nervous what-to-do-with-my-hands-in-this-tense-social-situation stuff which adds to the compulsion. But when you start going down this road, where do you stop? The more we find out about neurology and psychology the more we discover all these compulsions and genetic predispositions and all the rest of it, and behaviour which used to be seen as a matter of moral choice gets therapeutised as a manifestation of some syndrome or other. Antisocial bastard? He’s got mild Asperger’s Syndrome. Greedy pig? A compulsive eating disorder. Arrogant sod? Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Carry on and ultimately, at some level where Buddhism meets neurophysiology, maybe all our decisions are illusory, and the active responsible agent who’s supposed to be making all these personal choices just disappears.

It’s no way to run a society though. The only way for the whole deal to work is to make the assumption that we’re all (given the usual age and mental competence provisos) responsible moral agents and take it from there. Which means, as far as smoking is concerned, provide the public with the medical information, and let them make their own choices. As far as non-smokers are concerned, that means deciding whether they’ll be fussy and refuse to eat or drink in any establishment which allows smoking anywhere on the premises, or whether they’re happy with places which have smoking and non-smoking areas, or whether they think the whole thing about second-hand smoke is hugely exaggerated, and are quite happy to mingle with smokers. Same for bar-staff, waiters, etc.. That’s what they used to call a free country.

strong People’s Armed Police to put in the boot — is just what the backroom arguments are about. China’s leaders need no persuading that small sparks start big fires and, with protests and mass demonstrations officially admitted to have risen to 87,000 last year, the sparks are no longer small. Hu Jintao, China’s President, started by promising more democracy and open debate, but appears to have lost his nerve, pointedly praising North Korea’s party discipline and censorship in a 2004 speech.

Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister, has argued on “efficiency” grounds that “independent” thinking must be encouraged. He has recognised that a society of “yes” men cannot develop the innovative edge that drives the knowledge economy. But neither man dares risk the party’s neck. They understand Lenin’s dictum that knowledge is power, but not that it is slipping from their grasp, as Marx and Mao and Deng Xiaoping make way for King Blog.

But despite the best efforts of Yahoo, Google, etc., it’s a war the cyberplods will lose in the end:

The thousands of censors who patrol the internet in China must feel a little like King Canute. One Chinese expert described their task as showing the futility of trying to hold back the sea.

“Everyone knows where the controls are and that makes it pretty easy to get around them,” said one anonymous internet specialist. […]

[A] recent survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that the internet was already becoming an important political instrument. “The internet has become a prominent forum where the public can make its opinions known to the government,” the report said. “It is undeniable that the internet is building a bridge between the governing and the governed.”

The survey concludes that as the Internet becomes more popular so its impact on politics will become stronger.

Update: the ban on Freezing Point’s been lifted, but in the good old tradition of the Cultural Revolution, the editors have been instructed to “start its first edition on March 1 with a criticism of the essay that prompted the authorities to close the weekly in the first place”.

lowed her to wear a jilbab. […]

Shabina Begum v Denbigh High School is not just a case about the rights of a schoolgirl to wear a jilbab. It is also a case about whether a secular school may protect other pupils from religious pressures that seek to dictate the role of women.

An interview with Saudi blogger The Religious Policeman:

Do you consider yourself as a voice of sanity in a mad, mad world? If not, who are you and what is your goal?
I sometimes look at Saudi Arabia and think that I am the one who is mad, because I just don’t “get it”! My objective is quite simply to keep pointing out its dangerous idiocies, in the belief that one day it will become embarrassed about them, and start to behave like any other normal 21st Century nation state. It’s not as if Saudi Arabia is just a problem for its own people, like Zimbabwe and Myanmar; instead it exports its problems, in the form of terrorists and religious extremists, so it becomes a problem for everyone else.

What is your reaction to those who claim that The Religious Policeman’s only purpose in life is to ridicule Islam and Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia ridicules itself daily in the newspapers; all I do is to highlight that fact. The people who decapitate others in the name of Islam, or torch cars while shouting “God is Great”, or “honor-kill” women, are the ones who denigrate Islam, not me, and not the peaceful guy who goes to the mosque on Friday just to pray, and otherwise keeps himself to himself and takes care of his family.