Monthly Stats

Race Relations had 42 hits this month. Of these, the majority were once again from the US and UK, although this month Canada, Slovakia and Argentina get special mentions.

As always, the most interesting part of this month's stats are the searches that led people to find the site. Easily the most searched-for keyword of late has been "anjem". I'm not sure what these people were looking for, but I'd assume that in searching for this they ended up finding this post, in which I linked to a video of British jihadist Anjem Choudary justifying terrorist attacks against innocent civilians. I also continue to be amazed by the amount of people who get here by searching for Muhammad's "raisin-head" quote. I had no idea it was that well-known.

One of the more bizarre search strings was "do radical muslims killed women", and one chap even got here by searching for "islam is vile". Not sure what that led him to since I have never said that here, but whatever it was I hope he enjoyed it.

And on a related note, I'd like to once again thank everyone who has visited the site and attempted to contribute. It is appreciated. I hope you will all come back again some time.

Also, I'll be gone again until the New Year, and will begin posting again in 2008. Happy New Year for the 1st, everyone, and make yourselves a resolution not to be racist or Islamophobic...

Extras

So did you catch the "Extras" Christmas special last night?

Excellent, wasn't it?

Extras has never at any point been as funny as The Office. In terms of laughs, series one was the best. Series two was a little disappointing. It had its funny moments, but Gervais and Merchant lowered their standards somewhat, producing a series of pretty unrealistic, somewhat unlikely situations and reducing the character of Maggie to someone whose only purpose was to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and get Andy in trouble. And this after she was supposed to have grown up at the end of series one.

The special was really more drama than comedy, with high emotional stakes, but there were some funny moments - and the drama was excellently written and acted. And at the end of it all, there was a real message there. Andy's climactic speech on the nature of celebrity and the media was brilliantly written and acted by Ricky Gervais - I actually found myself getting quite emotional as he was speaking it! Those who put Gervais down should check out his acting here, as well as in the final scene of the second series of The Office in which a tearful David Brent begs not to be made redundant.

Overall, Extras has never reached the heights of The Office at its best - but what else has? Series one was the funniest, series two was the weakest - and the special was the most dramatic work Gervais and Merchant have done to date. No one should doubt their abilities as heavyweight television writers. Five stars.

Debating With Dhimmis Part II

The following is a reproduction of a recent exchange I had online, debating with your typical liberal PC Islamic apologist. I thought I'd post it as an example of the kind of thing I have to put up with when I attempt to educate people on Islam, and the typical responses I give. Also, it is noteworthy that this kind of level of "debate" really is what your average Western dhimmi goes in for.

-----------------------------------------------------

Quote: What I meant was...
all your posts on concerning Islam
should be considered 'racist'.

My reply: Really? And what race is Islam again?

Quote:

I must say... you sure did a lot of research. Now I could do research of my own to refute your ridiculous claims, but frankly... I'm lazy.

How convenient.

Quote:

I am just gonna say this... The words of the Prophet... The verses of the Quran... The words of the Prophet's companions... cannot be interpreted by just anyone. Only experts in the fields of Islamic studies and Arabic Literature are qualified to do so.

I see. And yet those "experts in the field", some of the greatest scholars and jurists in the history of Islam, seem to have come to the conclusion that Islam is teaching Muslims hatred and violence, as I have demonstrated many times with quotes from great Islamic thinkers. And in the modern day, influential clerics and imams seem also to have got the impression that Islam is violent: Omar Rahman, a lecturer at Islam's highest spiritual learning centre, Cairo's Al-Azhar University, once said: "Listen, my brother: there is a whole sura [chapter of the Qur'an] called 'The Spoils of War'; there is no Sura of Peace. Jihad and killing is the head of Islam. If you take it out, you cut off the head of Islam." Rahman later went on to mastermind the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

Did you catch that? That quote insinuating that violence was integral to Islam was not made by a "racist" - a highly educated Muslim said that; a Muslim who was teaching other Muslims about Islam - and who went on to be a terrorist. How does that happen?

And with this we get to the real crux of the thing: I am not a Qur'anic scholar. I have never claimed to be. And I don't interpret ANY passage of the Qur'an or Islamic tradition for myself. I only ever report on how jihadists use this material to justify violence, and how traditional Islamic scholars - not just "extremists" - interpret this same material. And according to you, doing that makes me hateful. It's amazing how many people today will accuse someone who reports on another person's hatred of being hateful themselves. It's the PC way to deal with uncomfortable ideas.

Quote:

It's like trying to explain to a KKK member that Blacks are humans too and should be treated as such.

No, it's really not, because I have never said that Muslims are not human and should not be treated equally. In fact, I've actually said in the past: "I believe in the dignity and equality of rights of all people, and will continue to oppose the elements of Islam which contravene the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". How hateful!

Quote:

What happened to you? Seriously. Did a Muslim kid steal your lollipop when you were young?

No. But someone must have stolen your spine.

Islam 101

OTHER OPPRESSIONS

“Allah's Apostle never killed anyone except in one of the following three situations: (1) A person who killed somebody unjustly (2) a married person who committed illegal sexual intercourse and (3) a man who fought against Allah and His Apostle and deserted Islam and became an apostate.” (Sahih Bukhari v.9, b.83, no.37)

We have seen that if you are a woman or a non-Muslim, you are going to have an uncomfortable time (to say the least) under sharia. But if you're a Muslim male, it's entirely different, right?

Not quite. While Muslim men enjoy many luxuries under Islamic law, sharia still holds plenty of seventh-century barbarisms in store for anyone who breaks its rules, and others who misbehave are also likely to find themselves in trouble. Islam matches, and maybe even exceeds, the brutal punishments laid out in the Old Testament of the Bible – the main difference being that Islam has never evolved away from these harsh rulings, and they are still part of Islamic law today, for any Muslim authority to legitimately enforce if they so choose.

Perhaps the most notorious and well-known of the Qur'an's over-the-top punishments is the penalty of amputation for theft: “As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise.” (Qur'an 5:38) This prohibition, however, does not seem to have been absolute, as Muhammad encouraged the taking of booty from his enemies after raids and battles on numerous occasions, and the Qur'an even directs that one-fifth of all war spoils should be donated to Allah and his charitable works (8:41).

Islam also mandates death penalties for a variety of offenses, one of the most striking being for apostasy – leaving Islam. Numerous hadith traditions have Muhammad recorded as saying simply, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.” (Bukhari v.9, b.88, no.6922, and others). Umdat al-Salik says that “when a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed”. Many radical Muslims take this law very seriously, and it has even been implemented in the new Afghanistan, which – backed by Coalition forces – is supposed to be a flowering democracy: Abdul Rahman, a convert to Christianity, was arrested and put on trial for his life there in 2006, only to later be released due to international pressure.

Homosexuals are also to be put to death, in line with Muhammad's sayings: “If a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death” (Abu Dawud, b.38, no.4448); “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him” (quoted in Umdat al-Salik). There are currently several convicted homosexuals awaiting execution in Iran.

Sharia also punishes adultery with death by stoning. Apologists for Islam are quick to point out that while Islamic law may indeed command this, the punishment is not mandated in the Qur'an, which says only that adulterers should be given a hundred lashes (24:2), and that therefore the law can be easily reformed. However, in one hadith tradition caliph Umar explains that the Qur'an did originally contain a verse calling for the stoning of adulterers, but it was somehow inadvertently dropped (Bukhari v.8, b.86, no.6830). Also, Muhammad himself enforced the stoning punishment, as on one occasion when he came across some Jews who had convicted a couple of adultery. Muhammad asked them what their prescribed punishment was for such a crime. Ever since the destruction of the Temple Mount in 70 CE, the Jews had moved away from barbarous capital punishments, and the group that Muhammad encountered attempted to dissemble, claiming that the punishment the Torah prescribed for adultery was lashes only. However, Muhammad called them out on this and scolded them for ignoring their scriptures, before ordering that the couple be stoned anyway (Bukhari v.4, b.61, no.3635). Convicted adulterers are still feeling the sting of those stones in the Islamic world today.

When British teacher Gillian Gibbons was recently arrested in Sudan for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad, many Westerners were surprised at the anger and death threats that came her way from Sudanese Muslims. Left unexplored in the mainstream media were the roots of this farce, going back to the time of Muhammad, who ordered the assassinations of people who wrote “insulting” poems about him. To this day, some Islamic legal schools still teach that non-Muslims in Islamic countries who “mention something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet . . . or Islam” can face one of four fates: death, enslavement, ransoming in exchange for money or release without paying anything, depending on the will of the person in charge. It is unanimously agreed among all the schools that if a Muslim insults Muhammad they should be put to death.

Islam is also very clear in condoning slavery. Muhammad owned dozens of slaves and did not at all disapprove of the practice. He even gave Muslims permission to have sex with slave girls they owned: “And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.” (Qur'an 4:24) Islamic tradition records numerous unsavoury incidents in which Muhammad gave his men permission to rape women they had captured in battle, e.g: “We got female captives in the war booty and we used to do coitus interruptus with them. So we asked Allah's Apostle about it and he said, 'Do you really do that?' repeating the question thrice, 'There is no soul that is destined to exist but will come into existence, till the Day of Resurrection.'” (Bukhari v.7, b.62, no.137) In other words, you can have as much sex as you like with your captives; the women won't get pregnant if Allah doesn't want them to. The Prophet also did it himself, “marrying” the wife of a Jewish leader whom he had just ordered beheaded after the siege of Khaybar. It is not recorded whether she consented, but it seems unlikely that she would marry and have sex with a man who had that same day murdered her husband.

Slavery has been a constant throughout Islamic history, particularly trading among non-Muslim slaves. Muslim forces would launch regular raids on non-Muslim lands specifically to acquire slaves, particularly from Greece and India, and would then sell them off for trading in other parts of the Islamic world. These slaves often also faced pressure to convert to Islam. One English captive from the eighteenth century recounted how he finally gave in to this pressure after his Muslim captors resorted to torture, setting him on fire on multiple occasions.

There is even evidence that some Western Muslims still keep slaves today. In 2006 a Saudi man in the US was found guilty of keeping a woman as a slave. The following month an Egyptian couple living in California were convicted of keeping a ten year old girl as a slave. And in early 2007 an attaché of the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington and his wife were charged with keeping three Christians in slave-like conditions.

But how is this any different to Christianity? The Bible, like the Qur'an, takes slavery for granted, never condemning it, and the Old Testament even contains regulations about selling your daughters as slaves.

And yet there has been opposition to slavery within the Christian world as far back as the Dark Ages. St Isidore of Seville declared that "God has made no difference between the soul of the slave and that of the freedman". Charlemagne and other Christian leaders also opposed it. In the 1500s, the Catholic missionary and bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas was instrumental in enacting a Spanish law forbidding the enslavement of the Indians. Furthermore, the end of slavery has its roots in Christian principles, as pioneering abolitionists such as Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Garrison were motivated by their deep Christian faith, and the Biblical assumption of the dignity and equality of all who are redeemed in Christ. Even Abraham Lincoln was compelled to help the families of slaves by appealing to Christian principles, including the Golden Rule of Jesus: Treat others as you wish to be treated.

This is not the case with Islam. Islamic slavery lasted longer and brought suffering to more people than did Christian slavery. It is estimated that the transatlantic slave trade, which operated between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, involved 10.5 million people, while the Islamic slave trade lasted from the seventh century to the nineteenth and involved 17 million people.

There was no abolitionist movement within Islam. When slavery did end, it was through British military force. Slavery is still openly practised in Sudan, and only ended in several Islamic countries (through Western pressure) very recently. And there is evidence that it is underhandedly practised in a good deal of other countries, such as Niger, which only abolished slavery in 2004 but where the laws are largely ignored and as many as a million people remain in bondage.

There are, of course, brave anti-slavery campaigners in the Muslim world, but they are finding it hard going because of the support for it in the Qur'an and Muhammad's (the Perfect Man's) example.

With all this oppression mandated in Islamic law, you may find yourself wanting to stay indoors and relax with a bit of self-expression or appreciation of the arts. But alas, this is forbidden also. Muhammad banned musical instruments: “Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance. On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress. Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.” (quoted in Umdat al-Salik) No doubt this would have been on the mind of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini when he famously uttered, “Music is treason to our nation and to our youth.” Muhammad also prohibited representational art: “Angels do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or some images (or pictures, etc) of living creatures (a human being or an animal etc).” (Bukhari v.4, b.59, no.3225)

And don't even think about sitting down and chilling out with a glass of wine, for alcohol is an “abomination, of Satan's handwork” (Qur'an 5:90).

It seems that Islam, in its traditional form, really doesn't allow you to do an awful lot, even if you're an astute believer. Of course, many Muslims do not subscribe to many of their religion's harshest ideals, and most Muslim countries are not enforcing full sharia law. But this system is precisely what Islamic supremacists want to impose on the rest of the world – by violence, if necessary. It is a system which is discriminatory and barbaric, and it stifles - maybe even denies - freedom of thought and expression. Which is why those of us in the West who value our freedom need to be aware of what it is we are defending ourselves against, if we are ever to summon up the will to prevent it from coming to pass.

For, as we shall see, Islam and liberal democracy do not go hand in hand.

Israel: Saying "Muhammad Is Dead" Is Racist

Israeli football club Betar Jerusalem is being punished for its fans' "racist" chants against Sakhnin. The fans supposedly chanted "Muhammad is dead".

Yep, racism. How can the Sakhnin team live with themselves now, carrying all that hurt?

An Apology and A Merry Christmas

I'm at a different computer today, and so had to sign in, rather than just opening up Blogger and finding myself already signed in, as usually happens at home. And so I opened up the main page and found that I have had a bunch of unmoderated comments which I have failed to publish. I could have sworn I turned comment moderation off already; in any case I've done so again and now all the worthy comments (barring the adverts) are published on the site, and hopefully in future all comments will be published automatically (even adverts). In the mean time, I just want to apologise to everyone who attempted to post a comment here and found that it never got published and I never responded to it. It won't happen again, I hope.


But as I'm not at home and only have temporary access to a computer, I'm also going to take this opportunity to say that I won't be posting again until after Christmas. I've got some busy days ahead, limited Internet access, and won't have the time. In any case, thanks to all who have read (and commented on) the blog this year, and I hope you will keep coming back in 2008.

Merry Christmas. I would say "ho ho ho!" but that's banned, along with the n-word. :)

The Lunatics Are Taking Over The Asylum

The findings from the Count Me In 2007 census ethnicity data shows that African people in Britain are over three times more likely to be admitted and detained as inpatients in mental health and learning disability services than the UK’s ethnic majority. The report acknowledges that a whole slew of factors are responsible for this - one of them, of course, being racism, which it seems to concentrate an inordinate amount of time on, although it presents no evidence to show that this is a factor at all. Indeed, it can't.

Anti-African racism in the UK health services...hmmm, that must be why we employ so many of them as doctors.

Cyp-Riot

Cypriot society is deeply racist towards non-locals, according to a survey of migrants, repatriates and Pontians.

Now, given the recent farce of the Israel "anti-Arab" racism survey, forgive me if I'm a little skeptical about the methodology of this one. For starters, just because "Sixty-three per cent of those asked reported suffering from discrimination and prejudice on a daily basis", that doesn't mean they actually WERE suffering from any discrimination and prejudice, as has been shown numerous times by the innocuous claims of "racism" we see from immigrants over here.

Let's Not Be Racist About Racism

At Family Security Matters there is an excellent article by Gabriel Garnica on what racism is - and what isn't. Here's an extract:

"The biggest tragedy in this society is that instead of combating racism and all form of prejudice in general and from any who exhibits it, we spend an inordinate amount of time defining prejudice by the standards and measures of political correctness. Given this distortion, we find that it is acceptable to exhibit prejudice against Whites, Christians, conservatives, the rich, the successful, the patriotic and all members of any non-White group who likewise exhibit these characteristics.

Do the same thing against non-Whites, Muslims, liberals, the poor, the marginalized, those who blame America for everything and any Whites who champion these characteristics and you are a hateful criminal out to impose your views and likely to destroy our society as we know it.

This double-standard, so perpetuated by the liberal media, is a despicable result of defining racism and all forms of prejudice by politically correct measures. Its heinous evil is two-fold. First, it creates more racism even as it pretends to confront it. Second, it allows the politically correct racist or prejudiced person to use this label as a shield against his or her own foibles and hypocrisy."

Be sure to read it all.

Round-up

1. Wesley Snipes has slammed the media for portraying him as a "bad guy" after he was charged with tax fraud, claiming he is a victim of racism. I've covered this one before.

2. An excellent piece by black writer Elbert Lewis Jr, in which he chastises the poor and uneducated in the black community for mostly bringing their condition upon themselves and then playing the race card because it's the easy option. Racist! Oh, wait...

Master of Eurabia

Remember that back in June Muhammad was second only to Jack as the most popular boys' name in Britain?

Well, looks like it's just about to take the top spot.

Eurabia here we come.

Islam 101

ISLAM OPPRESSES RELIGIOUS MINORITIES

“[T]he taker sits and the dhimmi stands with his head bowed and his back bent. The jizya is placed in the balance and the taker seizes his beard and hits his chin.”
(Jalaloddin As-Suyuti, 1445-1505 AD)

In my first series of articles, I made brief reference to the system of the dhimma, which institutionalises discrimination and oppression against non-Muslims in Muslim lands. But what does this entail in practice?

Dhimmis are non-Muslims (particularly the People of the Book: Jews and Christians) living under Islamic rule. Islamic law dictates that while dhimmis are free to practise their own religions in an Islamic state, they are only allowed to do so under severely restrictive conditions which emphasise their second-class status at every turn and are designed to make sure the dhimmis “feel themselves subdued”, as per Qur'an 9:29:

“[Dhimmis] are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not greeted with "as-Salamu 'alaykum" [the traditional Muslim greeting “peace be with you”]; must keep to the side of the street; may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims' buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to openly display wine or pork, [or] to ring church bells or display crosses, recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays; and are forbidden to build new churches.” (Umdat al-Salik)

Furthermore, “If non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state refuse to conform to the rules of Islam, or to pay the non-Muslim poll tax, then their agreement with the state has been violated.”

The “non-Muslim poll tax”, of course, is the jizya, also referred to in Qur'an 9:29. This was the cornerstone of the dhimmi system, and provided the main source of income for many Islamic empires throughout history. Some have erroneously compared the jizya to zakat, a Muslim charity tax, claiming that while dhimmis paid the jizya, Muslims paid zakat. Unfortunately for such apologists, though, the only similarity between the two is that they are both taxes. Zakat was usually 2.5% of a Muslim's annual earnings and was enforced loosely and with certain concessions available, with the money going to the poor and needy in the Muslim community. By contrast, the jizya was often set so high that dhimmis could not afford to pay it; it was collected by force and the funds went directly towards financing the Islamic state.

The jizya was also, historically, a good way of continuing the institutionalised humiliation of the dhimmis. It was often collected as part of a demeaning and belittling ceremony in which the Muslim tax official would hit the dhimmi over the head as he placed the money on the scales. The thirteenth-century jurist an-Nawawi directed that “the infidel who wishes to pay his poll tax must be treated with disdain by the collector; the collector remains seated and the infidel remains standing in front of him, his head bowed and his back bent. The infidel personally must place the money on the scales, while the collector holds him by the beard, and strikes him on both cheeks.”

Likewise, many Islamic scholars expressed the view that dhimmis should be made to feel inferior, with Ibn Kathir declaring that the dhimmis must be “disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated.”

It was largely because of the jizya that several prosperous non-Muslim populations were whittled down to tiny, despised minorities. Because of this unbearable tax, many dhimmis chose to convert to Islam in the hope that their lives would be improved. As a result, some religious demographics virtually vanished from the face of the Earth. For example, the Assyrian Christians, who were once all over Central Asia and the Middle East, are now largely confined to Iraq, where they face continuous persecution from Muslim radicals. Similarly Zoroastrianism, once the dominant religion in Persia, is now virtually non-existent except as a tiny minority in Iran.

Islamic apologists often point out that Islamic law forbids forced conversion, based on the Qur'an: “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (2:256). By mentioning this, they hope to make the case that early Islam's violent expansion was against the principles of the religion. But while this verse is in any case open to some interpretation, it is also beside the point. By and large, Islam did not spread by Muslims forcing non-Muslims to convert (although this did often happen). What spread by the sword was the hegemony of the Islamic legal system, which institutionalised discrimination against non-Muslims in the form of the dhimma. Subsequently, being a dhimmi was such an oppressive and horrible way to live that many dhimmis chose to convert. So the religion was not forced on them, but at the same time it was their only path to a livable existence.

Apologists have also been known to dredge up instances in which certain caliphs or Islamic rulers relaxed the dhimmi laws, or even cases where Jews and Christians achieved things of importance, or rose to levels of high authority, while living in Muslim lands. However, this hardly speaks volumes for Islamic tolerance. If the oppressions were sometimes lifted, it was not because Islam moved away from them. In fact, the dhimmi laws were still on the books, ready to be reinforced at any time, and often when they were relaxed Muslims would riot and rebel, complaining of a “breach of sharia”. Certainly, the dhimma was enforced by Muslim rulers throughout history more often than it was not.

Others even go as far as to suggest that even if non-Muslims were oppressed in the Middle Ages, this is nothing compared to how medieval Christians treated Jews. And it is true that Christianity has a history shamefully mired by anti-Semitism. Many popes forced oppressions on the Jews which were very similar to those inflicted on dhimmis. However, there is nothing in Christian tradition which mandates the subjugation of Jews, and many popes also relaxed or abolished these laws. There may have been much anti-Semitism in Christianity's past, but it is not as constant as in Islamic history. And in any case, Christian oppression of Jews was usually not as harsh as dhimmitude. For example, while the dhimma forbids Jews from publicly celebrating their religious festivals, Gregory X decreed in 1272 that Jews under his “protection” could do so, and he also opted for a form of fairness in not allowing Jews and Christians to testify against each other – whereas sharia law allows a Muslim to testify against a dhimmi, but a dhimmi cannot testify against a Muslim.

Modern jihadists are open and unreserved about their desire to see sharia law implemented in the West, and this would undoubtedly include the re-institution of the dhimma. Numerous clerics and scholars, such as Sheik Marzouq Salem al-Ghamdi in a sermon at a mosque in Mecca in 2002, have called for the dhimma to be re-instated. If the jihadists or their non-violent sympathisers were to get their way, non-Muslims would be discriminated against as part of judicial law. This is one reason why all non-Muslims, no matter their faith or lack thereof – and indeed, all Muslims of good will, also – should do their utmost to ensure that this intolerant system is never allowed to take root in the West.

Unfortunately, too many remain indifferent.

Next time: If you're a Muslim male, you're free from oppression under sharia, right? Wrong.

Good Jews!

At the beginning of the week I posted a link to a new survey which found that anti-Arab racism has skyrocketed among Israeli Jews. I expressed my disappointment in the Israelis that this was the case.

Well, looks like I spoke too soon, for here is the response from Jewish Press, exposing the far-Left leanings and biases behind the group that carried out the survey, and the highly flawed findings of the report.

Good Jews!

Peer Criticises Muslim "Hotheads"

Muslim peer Baroness Warsi has hit out at Muslim "hardliners and hotheads" who use Islam to argue against voting and equal rights for women.

It is good to see a Muslim who is actually speaking out against the hardliners, rather and continually against "Islamophobes" who point out that these hardliners exist. It's also good to see her saying that Muslims should stop trying to claim the victim status and become more active in society.

I have problems with a couple of her comments, though.

"I've got a clear message to the hardliners and hotheads who claim to speak for British Muslims. When you say that voting is un-Islamic, you're wrong."

If this is the case, then one wonders why Islamic-based societies have always been so stringently un-democratic.

"When you say that women should not have access to education or employment; that women's equality is un-Islamic; or that women should not adopt leadership positions like politics, you're wrong, wrong, wrong."

In that case, Miss Warsi needs to explain just what is meant by the Qur'anic passages that say women are inferior to men and must be ruled by them (4:34), that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's (2:282), that a daughter's inheritance is half that of a son's (4:11), and other such decrees which seem to deny women equality of rights with men. Would Warsi be willing to explain how hardliners have misunderstood these passages? If so, she needs to do so because plenty of Muslims around the world seem to take these passages quite seriously.

"Islam was "unambiguous" in its rejection of forced marriages,"

Depends what you mean by "forced marriages". Muhammad, the Perfect Man in Islamic theology, allowed his soldiers to take the widows of their opponents as war booty after various battles. The Prophet himself married a young girl whose husband he had just ordered beheaded after the siege of Khaybar. So obviously Islam isn't quite "unambiguous" on the matter at all.

On the other hand, there is one more beacon of hope:

"She called on all members of the Muslim community to help in the fight against terrorism.

"We must accept that we're in all in this together - but Muslims have an added responsibility to defeat extremism, because extremism is claimed in the name of Islam," Baroness Warsi said."

Islamophobe!

Seriously, it is nice to see a Muslim actually acknowledging that it may be the Muslim community's RESPONSIBILITY to eradicate radicalism from within their own ranks, just as I have been saying for ages now, much to the constant criticism of dhimmis everywhere, who unfathomably find this totally unreasonable. How Baroness Warsi plans to do this, she doesn't say, but it is more than we have heard other "moderate" Muslims in Britain say for years.

Bad Jews

A new survey has found that a large number of Jews have prejudices against Arabs. In a report, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said expression of anti-Arab views had doubled, and racist incidents had increased by 26%. In another poll, almost 75% of Jewish youths said Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews.

Given what has been done to the Jews by the Arabs over the centuries, one may say that they have a right to feel suspicious or uncomfortable with the Arabs. But there's no excuse for this. I'm disappointed; I thought the Israelis were better than this.

Suffer The Little Children

This is a strictly off-topic post...but in a way it is related to racism. The partner of political correctness and multi-culturalism is the Health And Safety Fascist Brigade. In many ways this mollycoddling nanny state attitude is very similar to racial political correctness, and is usually espoused by the same sorts of people.

And in the latest elf n' safety farce, we hear that pantomime performers have been banned from throwing sweets into the audience in case they hit children on the head.

As Richard Littlejohn is wont to say: You couldn't make it up.

Debating With Dhimmis

I've recently had a couple of online debates with liberal apologists about Islam, and its status as NOT a Religion of Peace. And it's amazing how many different kinds of apologists there are. Sometimes, these dhimmis will actually regress through the various different stages of apologism as the debate progresses. I have noticed this pattern:

- They start out by insisting that Islam is a Religion of Peace
- When you show them, through passages from the Qur'an, sunna and fiqh, that it isn't, they begin making excuses for the material you present
- When they can no longer defend Islam, they switch to firing verses of the Bible at you and wittering on about the Crusades
- When you ask them to point out a passage in the Bible which calls on all Christians to wage war against non-believers, or to cite a case in which Christians have used specific Bible verses to justify massive holy war, they are unable to do so
- When you call them out on all of the above, they call you names and falsely accuse you of every hideous crime known to man

But what surprised me most about these debates was that so many people found the idea that Muslims should be responsible for preventing the jihad of their co-religionists to be completely unreasonable. I was accused of wanting to round all Muslims up in "re-education camps" until they say exactly what I want to hear, and of thinking that all Muslims are inherently "bad" until I come along and mould them to my desires. All of which is ridiculous, of course. I ask only that Muslims work out ways to convince other Muslims that Islam is a Religion of Peace - in the face of mountains of Islamic tradition and law which says the opposite - rather than expending all their efforts trying to tell ME that. This is my opinion on what I think could be done to end Islamic radicalism. And while I come up with these ideas, hopeless dhimmis slam them down for no reason, while not coming up with any solutions of their own. It's enough to make you want to scream.

And why are they so obstinate? The answer is simply multi-culturalism - the idea that if Whitey calls on Brownie Muslims to take responsibility for their own actions and the actions of the community, he is being arrogant, biased and bigoted. The desperation in these dhimmis' replies became increasingly clear as they backpeddled and moved the goalposts to suit their increasingly transparent worldviews. It would be sad if it wasn't so infuriating.

I also encountered several Muslims who stated flatly that Islam was a Religion of Peace without saying one single thing to contradict the evidence I presented to show that it wasn't. In the past one actually accused me of making violent Qur'an passages up. And yet the morally and intellectually snobbish leftists think that I should accept these people as true moderates. No mention is made by them of how plain denial by Muslims of what their religion teaches will prevent other Muslims from thinking it's telling them to be violent. No answers at all. Only blindness.

I finished my debate with them by saying, "I hope you enjoy paying the jizya." I really wish I was being sarcastic.

Load & Reload

You're gonna love this one:

"The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005."

Sarkozy Condemns Racism

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has enunciated the importance of fighting against racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, speaking to business people in Algiers on Monday.

And yet, if you listen to some liberals, Sarkozy actually embodies all of these things himself. This is based, most likely, on the fact that he's a conservative, so therefore he must be a bigot - that's liberal rationality and tolerance for ya.