That Muslim/Christian Parallel

Daily Mirror

The bombings of Thursday are no more an expression of Islam than the IRA's bombs were an expression of Catholicism.

Bishop of Lichfield

... just as the IRA has nothing to do with Christianity; so this kind of terror has nothing to do with any of the world faiths ...

Conspiracy Site

The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA (obviously written by someone who's never been to Belfast)

Islamic Terrorism : An Oxymoron

Ever noticed how the IRA has never been labelled Christian terrorists, or Christian extremists, or Christian militants, or other such labels?

It does seem unfair when you look at it that way. Just compare these two statements.

After the London bombings :

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him.

Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

God says: "You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly."

After Canary Wharf.

Statement from the Republican News Service, Dublin

In the name of God the Father, maker of all things, seen and unseen, of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, by whose Blood we are redeemed, of the Holy Spirit, and of Our Lady the Blessed Virgin, Queen of Ireland and Star of the Sea. Amen.

Nation of Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Ireland: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Protestant Cromwellian Ironsides in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Loughgall and Gibraltar. The heroic Warriors of Christ The King have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in London after our glorious Jesuit warriors exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

We continue to warn the governments of Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, and all Orange and Calvinist apostates against Holy Church and His Holiness the Pope, peace and long life be upon him, that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from occupied Catholic Bavaria, repent their apostasy, and return penitent to Holy Mother Church. He who warns is excused.

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

Signed :

P O'Neill

Blimey - Trevor Phillips makes the same point ! (via Norm)

I Think I Understand ...

... last Thursday's events were nothing to do with Muslims, and anyone who thinks so is a willy.

And unless we change our foreign policy, they'll do it again.

Tell It Like It Is

Gerard Baker on self-loathing English liberals.

Suppose we’d never invaded Iraq, and terrorists had blown up London in pursuit of their cause, what would the apologists have said about last week’s attacks? In fact we know exactly what they would have said because many of them did say it after al-Qaeda attacked the US on September 11 — long before any American or British soldier set foot in Afghanistan or Iraq.

They said it was because of our support for Israel and its “brutal occupation of Palestinian territory”, our complicity in the victimisation of Arabs from the Balfour Declaration to the ascent of the Jewish lobby in America.

But what if there had never been an Israel and instead a Palestinian state existed peaceably in the heart of the Middle East, and the terrorists had still attacked us? What would the apologists have said then? They would have said, of course, that we were to blame for having abused the Arabs and Muslims generally for decades through our colonial ambitions and economic exploitation of Arabia and the broader Middle East.

And what if there had never been a British Empire and British occupation of Arab lands, and terrorists had still attacked us? Then it would have been the Crusades, and the long-standing ill-treatment of Muslims at the hands of deplorable Christian warriors.

And what if there had never been a crusade, and they’d still attacked us? I’m stumped at this point to confect an answer, but I can guarantee that whatever it was that would have been said it would have been Britain’s fault.

This English self-loathing would be less objectionable if it had not been so prominent in its less virulent form, in so much British policy and public life, for the past 60 years. In its less virulent form, it was the driving force behind the misguided anything-goes multiculturalism of the 1960s and 1970s and the desire to shed vestiges of British or English nationalism within the European Union for 40 years now.

Especially curious is that it is an oddly British, or perhaps Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. The French elites certainly don’t succumb to it, or the Russian, or the Chinese, though all three of them have a fair bit to answer for in their own histories.

And that’s the irony: the most painful irony of all in this English self-loathing is this simple truth. The beauty of human freedom that so many in the world now enjoy, the wonder of so much prosperity, the legacy of the Enlightenment, the very principles of cultural and political tolerance and free inquiry, owe more to Britain, and latterly our Anglo-Saxon allies who have taken on the baton in the past century, than to any other country on Earth.

Government "to make blowing people up illegal"

In a dramatic new response to terrorism, the Homne Office are suggesting legislation that would target people "providing or receiving training in the use of hazardous substances and in other methods or techniques for terrorist purposes".

Which will presumably cover the man who wrote this. No wonder the guy on the bus looked agitated. 5 grams can blow your hands off. Wikipedia thinks it's this stuff.

New offences could cover people going to terrorist camps overseas or finding out how to build a bomb through the internet, said the Home Office.

Don't they realise that making things go bang is what boys of all ages enjoy ? First they took all our guns away, now they want to take our bombs !

BBC - honest reporting or myth recycling ?

Is Dominic Casciani choosing his words carefully here ?

Take the 2001 Bradford riots, for example, which had everything to do with a corked bottle of pent-up anger that exploded on the streets.

Crucially, the clashes themselves are popularly thought to have been triggered by white racists deliberately provoking young Muslim men to fight back. And when they did, the situation quickly got out of control.

Now I lived in Bradford full many a year and still return to visit friends, some of whom live in the areas where the rioting took place. I've searched news sources, asked people who were in the town that day, and there seems to be no credible evidence that 'white racists' triggered the riots.

Note that 'are popularly thought' get-out clause. Keep the liberal myth going, without actually lying. Yet the suceeding sentence, 'And when they did' implies the truth of the first sentence.


Here's another little example, from Islamic Affairs analyst Roger Hardy, asking "whether British-style multi-culturalism is succeeding or failing."

Muslims have lived in Britain for centuries, but only relatively recently have they become the focus of controversy.

Muslims have lived in Britain for centuries, have they ? We're back in 'A Nation Of Immigrants' country. I think I'd better quote from Migrationwatch.

There has always been some migration to and from Britain. While people from many countries have lived in Britain for centuries, numbers have generally been small. The historical episodes that are well known - the Huguenots of the 16th and17th century, the Ashkenazi Jews of the late 19th century and others - have been demographically relatively insignificant. Until the1950s there was no really substantial immigration into Britain, except from Ireland, for nearly 1000 years.

There have been Muslims in Britain for centuries, alright - namely the diplomatic staff representing the Ottoman Empire. You could say with just as much truth that there have been Russians in Britain for centuries.

So Roger Hardy keeps another liberal myth in the air, while sticking to literal truth.

Calm Down, Calm Down - Or Not

When I saw the Magna Mater Melanie was all in a tizz about this BBC story, I sighed inwardly, thinking that sometimes the Great Mother sees anti-semitism whare it don't exist.

I remember her concern when BBC Radio serialised 'Trilby' with its Jewish demi-villain. She'll just have to get used to the fact that, as the most exotic 'other' in early 20th century England, Jews often supplied the villains for a host of crime and mystery writers. Just as the English now do for Hollywood. I assume Mel's not a big Dornford Yates fan.

Then I read the BBC story again :

'Sharon vows vengeance on bombers'

'Israeli leader Ariel Sharon has ordered his forces to shatter a Palestinian militant group, after a suicide bomb killed four Israelis..."I ordered the defence establishment to increase our activity and to do as much harm as possible to the leadership of the Islamic Jihad terror organisation," Mr Sharon said in a speech near Tel Aviv."We will not leave them alone until they stop these murderous acts." '


And The Divine Ms M's take again :

The purpose of this operation is therefore to destroy the source of this terror in order to prevent more Israelis from being murdered. What Sharon has ordered is therefore an operation to defend the lives of his citizens from further attack. Yet the BBC describes this as vengeance. In BBC land, it seems, Jews aren't people like everyone else and entitled to defend themselves from being slaughtered like everyone else. Instead, they do vengeance, a stock jibe straight from the Jew-haters' manual.

Isn't it about time that someone prosecuted the BBC for incitement to racial hatred ?

Now, I thought - hold on a minute. While there's no doubt that the BBC, along with the rest of the post-Soviet left, is institutionally anti-semitic, surely in this case their skin is clean. Take a look at these 31 examples of the BBC reporting Hamas or other Palestinian calls for 'revenge' on Israel.

Now 'revenge' is at least as negative a word as 'vengeance', and it has also been used to describe a Jew's attitude. But the point of the passage is to show that Jews are like, not unlike, other people.

Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

And 'vengeance' is used by the highest authorities.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.



Then I read them again. And realised that while Hamas actually was vowing revenge, Mr Sharon didn't use the word 'vengeance' at all.

"I ordered the defence establishment to increase our activity and to do as much harm as possible to the leadership of the Islamic Jihad terror organisation," Mr Sharon said in a speech near Tel Aviv.
"We will not leave them alone until they stop these murderous acts."

I see no call for vengeance - just an elected politician performing what is the first duty of any leader - defending his people from outside attack. When there is no need to protect people ('until' is the key word) Israeli action will stop.

When Blair and various policemen vowed to catch the London bombers, the BBC didn't headline it 'Blair vows vengeance'.


Maybe Melanie's got a point after all.

Pointy Heads

The counterculture of the 60s and 70s, which started to go mainstream in the 80s and is now the culture of our ruling class, had three main strands, all to some extent intermingled.

At one end of the spectrum were the politicos, the Marxists - earnest, bookish types or streetfighting sorts, the Socialist Worker sellers, the meeting-goers, Militant, IMG, SLL and a dozen others. A masculine strand, dialectically materialistic and non-religious. Bomber jacket and beret. Polnts of order and secret meetings. At the other end - the proto-tree-huggers, the wholefood cookers, woollen-knitters, stripped pine, earth spirit types. A feminine strand - Earl Grey and barm-brack by the open fire, Joni Mitchell on the stereo. Very nice girls they were too. Indian print skirts, rainbow sweaters - and religious, or at least spiritual - Buddhism, spiritualism, animist. When feminism struck they talked aboout the Goddess within and went circle dancing.
Then there were the people who just wanted to get smashed, and could be found all over the spectrum, though at either end such behaviour was frowned on.

You can see these people, or their cultural descendants, thirty years on. Ken Livingstone is a classic type 1. Louise Casey sounds a bit of a type three.

What of our type twos ? Some married practical men, had babies and did a lot of home cooking. Fortunate indeed are those men. Many became social workers - an awful lot went into 'children's services'. Some write about emotional literacy, some write blogs. Some marry African healers and are beaten to death by them.

Some opened wholefood co-ops in hippy havens, before tragically becoming Calderdale Labour Council Leaders and finally deputy chairman of quango the Countryside Agency, a role for which she would appear to have few qualifications beyond knowing one end of a mung bean from the other, and doubtless a knowledge of the best magic mushroom fields in the Pennines. Oh - and being 'one of us' to Nu Labour.

Ms Pam Warhurst (for it is she) revealed on Radio 4 RealAudio) that the taxpayer is stumping up £1.5 million on a 'diversity review' of the countryside. Apparently there simply aren't enough minorities, inner ciy dwellers, and disabled people in the country.

We've been here before.

The agency's brief (they are based in the vibrant multicultural melting pot that is Cheltenham) is to "make the quality of life better for people in the countryside and the quality of the countryside better for everyone." Apparently the quality of life in the country would be improved if more inner-city dwellers went there.

In Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, at any rate, this is already happening.

Cheap motor travel enables inner-city dwellers from Bristol to take the A38 up to Cam and Dursley, there to relieve the inhabitants of their property, or hold up the local post office. The money raised is used to buy heroin, thus enriching poor Afghan farmers in a modern Triangular Trade.

Inner city dwellers of all races who can afford it also leave the chaos and violence of the inner city for the country, or as near to it as they can afford. The swathes of new housing around Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham are full of ex-Brummies, Bristolians, Londoners.

Finally minorities play a bigger role in the countryside than is appreciated. Every modern farmer has a couple of caravans in the yard, housing Eastern European farm workers. And in market-gardening country, from Bromsgrove to the Vale of Evesham, the fields are a colourful sight, as workers from all over the world pick fruit and veg. This, of course, by destroying the jobs (and tied cottages) of the native agricultural workers, is turning the countryside into one great suburb, where only the rich can affford to live.

Pam's problem is that many of the people who move to the country do so in order to avoid people from inner cities. After all, it isn't the buildings which cause high crime rates. She appears to be saying to such people - 'you can run, but you can't hide'.

This will almost certainly turn out to be counterproductive from her perspective. The timing's not too good either, given recent events. I'm not sure the timing of this is too good either.

"The question is... there is a sense in which if you go on presenting the safe white, middle-class suburbia as a subject in the context of sitcoms, are you missing out other innovative, more exciting areas? "

Elsewhere in pointy head land, this really shows (again) how clueless our rulers are.

Steiner schools, which emphasise developing the "whole child", could hold lessons for mainstream state-funded education, a report says.

The first government-funded study of Steiner schools, by the University of the West of England, comes as one is seeking to become a city academy.

Now Steiner schools (hippy-dippy education) are fine for the kind of people who like Steiner schools. Who tend to be middle class, not poor, and white. My friend used to have the job of picking the flowers to decorate each classroom - should work well in Shildon or Aston. Other friends have children at the Gloucester school.

But they're not perfect. Bullying can be a problem if you don't fit in. Anyone called Wayne or Kyle is likely to be given a hard time. Most of the pupils are called Sky or Tree.


UPDATE - Children called Kyle are in danger in State schools too. Best read in conjunction with this.

Brighton Man Praises Gary Younge Article Shock Horror

Following this post, Jonathan of the Brighton band Assistant was rushed to an undisclosed hospital, where teams of neurologists are monitoring his brain patterns round the clock.

A hospital spokesperson said : "We became concerned on realising that no blogger had ever had a good thing to say about the writer in question. Jonathan, while lucid, has a higher than normal brain temperature and is subject to episodes during which he talks about an enemy called 'Little John'. We have prescribed Oliver Kamm, 300 words per hour.

The Orange Of Ulster

Last year's post stands. Although married to a Catholic and a regular attender at Mass, I am quite happy with commemoration of the 12th. For all but a few on either side, religion is but the visible badge of a tribal allegiance, where Catholic signified Irish and Protestant a Briton. Insulting the Holy Father, peace and long life be upon him, is, while distasteful, not the greatest crime upon this earth.

Though what effect the new Religious Hatred Bill will have upon the 12th, I dread to think.

My gripe goes back a bit earlier - to Henry VIII and his stripping of the altars. Where now are the shrines of Wulfstan and Oswald ?

And More ...

I don't understand. A gang of teenagers beat Mugilan Sutherman to death, and it's apparently not a racist attack.

Yet this is. What's the difference ? 7/7 ?

Remember Salford City Council - so tough on crime that they sacked a teacher with an unblemished record when she snapped after a campign of harassment against her ?

They've just turned down her appeal.

They seem to think the area has a bad image, so they're using public money to fund a witty, post-modernist campaign promoting Salford.



You know what ? They're so right.

Greater Manchester Police said the girls, two aged eight and one seven-year-old, were attacked after being forced into a secluded area.

The girls had been playing on swings when they were approached by a youth.

Police said a 14-year-old boy would be questioned at some time on Monday on suspicion of rape.

Low Intensity Warfare

With UK homicides running at over 900 a year, it's worth considering that last Thurday's attacks killed about as many people as would be killed over an average three week period.

Fortunately we have people like Judge Leeona Dorrian QC to protect us.

When 58-year old grandmother Ann Whittle went to the local car boot last year, parking spaces were few and far between. They had to wait for someone to leave before Mrs Whittle could stand in the space to 'reserve' it while her husband moved the car in.

Unfortunately 34-year-old Carol McMillan and her 'partner' had also spotted the empty space. McMillan got out of their 4x4 and stood in the same place.

"Mrs Whittle made a comment to the effect that she and her husband were there first. Carol McMillan turned and grabbed her by the hair and then kicked her on the face three times."

McMillan's 'partner' joined in, leaving his car to assault Mr Whittle.

“I was getting beaten until another man pulled him off me. Then I looked over and saw Ann slumped beside a fence at the side of the road.

“She was purple with bruises and I couldn’t find her pulse so I yelled, ‘You’ve killed my wife’. But he just sneered, ‘That’ll be right’ and walked away.”

Mrs Whittle had collapsed and died of a heart attack.

Her killer's sentence ? Three years probation and 240 hours community service.

Other press coverage here, here, here and here.

The strange thing is that Judge Dorrington is quite happy to jail someone for driving while drunk, but not for kicking a woman to death.

Elsewhere in Scotland, people find that small babies or people in wheelchairs are an easy target.

Srebrenice

With so much going on it was easy to pass by the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenice massacre, when 8,000 men and boys were killed by Serb forces under the noses of Dutch UN peacekeepers, while the government of John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd maintained a policy of masterly inactivity, as did the rest of the EU. Only when the Yanks started kicking NATO was there any action.

In pre-blogging days on the ES bulletin boards I remember comparing today's Left with its 1930s counterparts, and asking how many students had gone to fight in Bosnia as their forebears did in Spain.

My answer was - hardly any. I remember one solitary Geordie who was in all the papers.

But I was wrong. While the Native Brits bewailed the horrors and sat on their hands, maybe a few hundred young British Muslims went to defend their brothers in religion. Thousands went from all over the world. After all, no-one else was doing anything for the Bosnian Muslims. Before 9/11, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, Bosnia was the crucible from which the modern jihad was cast.

The Mark Steyn article I linked to in the last post contains the following :

Since 9/11 most Britons have been sceptical of Washington's view of this conflict. Douglas Hurd and many other Tory grandees have been openly scornful of the Bush doctrine. Lord Hurd would no doubt have preferred a policy of urbane aloofness, such as he promoted vis à vis the Balkans in the early 1990s. He's probably still unaware that Omar Sheikh was a westernised non-observant chess-playing pop-listening beer-drinking English student until he was radicalised by the massacres of Bosnian Muslims.

Abdel Karim al-Tuhami al-Majati was another Europeanised Muslim radicalised by Bosnia. The inactivity of Do-Nothin' Doug and his fellow Lions of Lethargy a decade ago had terrible consequences and recruited more jihadists than any of Bush's daisy cutters. The fact that most of us were unaware of the consequences of EU lethargy on Bosnia until that chicken policy came home to roost a decade later should be sobering: it was what Don Rumsfeld, in a remark mocked by many snide media twerps, accurately characterised as an "unknown unknown" - a vital factor so successfully immersed you don't even know you don't know it.

Food for thought ...

UPDATE - I've moved this post forward to add a couple more points.

The Pub Philosopher has an apposite post - looking at the massacre through the eyes of a 'root cause' merchant.

And how about this for biscuit-taking hypocrisy ?

But Mr Straw said the international community bore some of the blame, adding: "We mourn the thousands killed here. And, as we utterly condemn those responsible for the slaughter, we recall the chilling words of Edmund Burke that 'the only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'.

"For it is to the shame of the international community that this evil took place under our noses, and we did nothing like enough. I bitterly regret this, and I am deeply sorry for it."

That really makes my blood boil. One word - Darfur.

Ho Hum ...

The Northwest Frontier is not a healthy place for feminist activism.

(via Badthinking)

Terror Apologists For Peace - on the BBC

Via the Rottweiler Puppy, a peaceful, moderate Muslim speaker - or is he ?

UPDATE - Harry has also noticed.

"It is important that the British public know what Tamimi's views are." says David T on the site.

Well they won't find out from BBC news, that's for sure.

In May Last Year ...

... I noted that a Government committee met to discuss "draft a plan to tackle the roots of Islamic terrorism in Britain."

Sone of the cabinet documents are now available via the Sunday Times.

Also in the ST, a piece by Janice Turner which addresses a few uncomfortable realities.

More uncomfortable realities at the Social Affairs Unit.

For four years now, Londonders have had a reprieve from direct involvement in the war on terror. Sure, they often emoted on the streets about how "upset" and "concerned" they were about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (which affected their daily lives not a jot), but the war had not come to them. Our media and government got lazy (though not - it should be noted - our superb intelligence or emergency services) and gave larger and larger megaphones to those who hate us and those who defend those who hate us.

So we breed Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif in our midst, two young men who go out to Tel Aviv and blow up Jews in the name of jihad. And what do we do at home? Nothing. We breed Omar Sheikh in our midst and send him to the LSE: he graduates to Pakistan and saws the head of Daniel Pearl. And what do we do at home? Nothing.

Nothing is done about the unknown number of fighters who have left Britain to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to murder members of our armed forces. Nothing is done about those who encourage them to do this. Nothing is done about the countless number of young Muslims who go around with pictures of Westerners being decapitated on their cell-phones or questions where their allegiances may really lie. Nothing is done about those who act as apologists for the terrorists, or who pretend to condemn crimes against British people, but seem to believe that Jews can be blown up without remorse. Indeed, so unperturbed are we by our position as a centre from which terrorists are sent out to kill and maim Americans, Jews and our own British soldiers, that we even invite one of the men who acts as their greatest inspiration - not simply into the city which has now been bombed, but give him the full red-carpet honoured-guest treatment.

Of course the problem with 'doing something' is that, as the BBC never tires of repeating, that's what bin Laden wants. By 'doing something' we radicalise young Muslims, are percieved as attacking Islam - thereby only making more trouble for ourselves. "Don't be nasty to them - you'll only make them angry".

So I imagine the Government response will be to

a) remove more freedoms from the whole population, spun as the 'shared price we pay for defending a free society'. Those who object will be presented as objectively pro-terrorist.

b) up the apology and breast-beating

c) zilch - the 'we'll muddle through somehow' response'. Immigration to continue unchecked.