Eye On Islam

My new blog, "Eye On Islam", has now gone live.

Link here.

This blog, "Race Relations", is now officially discontinued.

Have a nice day.

Where I've Been

If you're a regular reader (I guess it's possible), you'll notice that I disappeared without a trace about three weeks ago. I haven't posted in all that time, and I suppose I might as well explain why.

Recently I've been very busy. I've had a lot on my plate in terms of work, and haven't had as much time to post. I have still had time, but the heavy workload has made me completely disinclined to blog. Race-related issues are a partial interest of mine, but Islam has always been my primary focus. My expertise is in Islam and jihad, and that's what I find it most interest to research and write about. So some time in the next two or three weeks, I'm going to start a new blog on Islam-related matters. It's going to be semi-regular in terms of post output, so as not to put me under too much pressure to deliver regular new content every day. But I believe it's going to be a better blog than this one ever was. When I start the blog, I will post a link to it here so that people can be directed to the new site.

Cheers, and peace
Ben

Obama and Durban II

It's not funny, Mr. Obama

Here's a decent piece on Obama's apparent reluctance to rule the US out of the scheduled UN "Durban II" anti-racism conference, which Canada and Israel have already pulled out of after the last conference turned into an anti-Israel, antisemitic tirade by the Muslim nations.

Obama has got off to a pretty bad start as President, I'd say.

UPDATE: He's pulled out at last.

Guess The Outcome

A white schoolboy left for dead by a hammer-wielding gang of Asians has insisted the attack was racially motivated. Fifteen-year-old Henry Webster was assaulted by a gang of 13 youths, one carrying a claw hammer, on a school tennis court in January 2007. The attackers were sentenced to only between eight months and eight years last year, but they would likely have got longer if the attack had been proven to be racist.

I wrote about this incident back when it happened, and I predicted then that there would be virtually no attention from the media or the authorities to the "racist" element, because the victim was white and the attackers Asian. Whether the attack was racist or not, something stinks here, and it's symptomatic of the entire media and legal attitude towards racism - it only ever goes one way.

Round-up

1. A newspaper cartoon comparing Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee which was gunned down by police has sparked a race row in the U.S.

This is NOT racist, but the paper should have known better than to run this cartoon and create an unnecessarily bad reputation for themselves. I believe they should have been allowed to publish it; however, from their own point of view, it would have been better for them not to.

2. Melanie Phillips: "Our police were never guilty of 'institutional racism' and it's time this witch-hunt ended."

3. As Geert Wilders is banned from the country, look who's already here - not only Abu Qatadah, "bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe", who "issued a 1995 fatwa or religious edict justifying the killing of converts from Islam, their wives and children in Algeria...[and] [i]n a 1999 sermon he called for the killing of Jews and praised attacks on Americans," but also Anjem Choudary, who thinks non-Muslims are not innocent people and thus can be killed with impunity, and has recently argued that people who get drunk should be flogged.

But remember, Wilders is the real dangerous extremist.

A Nation of Cowards

"Cowards! Ner ner nee nur nur!"

US Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States today as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing unresolved racial issues.

That's because most Americans, Eric, actually don't want to divide people up into races all the time and start talking about them, preferring to treat everyone as their fellow human beings rather than someone of a "different type". You call this cowardice; I call it the opposite of racism - anti-racialism.

Monday Night Tarot

No, this isn't a card-reading session; it's just a couple of videos from the Finnish heavy metal band Tarot, starring the metal god that is Marco Hietala.

"Pyre of Gods":



"Ashes to the Stars":

Round-up

1. A council in the West Midlands has withdrawn its funding for a St George's Day parade after claims it had attracted some "racist elements".

Booga booga!

2. This is a late one, from last November: The angry mother of a man found guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of a bus passenger two years ago and emotional members of his victim's family confronted one another outside an Ottawa courtroom. The then-17-year-old attacker, armed with a butterfly knife, stabbed a 23-year-old once in the heart in September 2006 after attempting to steal an iPod from him as he sat in the last row of a city bus. Tempers flared when the mother and aunt of the convicted man, who are black, complained loudly to reporters about the composition of the 12-member jury, who were all white, suggesting the jurors might not have returned the same verdict if the accused was a white man and the victim was black.

This kind of manipulation, playing the race card in such a callous, cynical way, is corrosive and not far away from evil, and those who engage in it should be rejected and shunned for the pusillanimous cowards they are.

Prince Harry Cannot Be Any More Humiliated

Prince Harry is to be sent on an equality and diversity training course after being forced to apologise for using racially offensive language, it has emerged.

The world has gone mad. (Just ask Geert Wilders)

Integration Fail

By Golly, There's More!

The golliwog saga continues: Buckingham Palace has issued an extraordinary apology after the Queen's shop at Sandringham was found to be selling golliwogs.

On a related note, looking at my latest stats, someone recently found this site by Googling "Andrian Chiles is a horrible snitch".

On Militant Anti-Racism

There is a decent piece about the Carol Thatcher controversy over at - of all places - the Guardian today. It's as good an explanation of the flaws of the "anti-racist" crowd as any I've seen.

Most young people today – those I know and those I hear on radio and TV – think racism is the No 1 crime, unforgivable in any form, real or imaginary. Being old enough at 63 to be bilingual in these matters I sometimes make remarks (in private!) designed to make them flinch – just for the frisson it causes.

I respect the sentiments behind the flinch, although I doubt that racism is any worse than many other prejudices that human beings harbour against each other on bad days, sometimes with equally horrible consequences.

The idea that it is a vice unique to white Europeans or north Americans is also a bit of a chuckle, as the Chinese will one day demonstrate when their looming hegemony provides some scope. You could sniff the sense of effortless superiority in those scolding speeches this week.

Myself, I think snitching on private conversations is pretty offensive, too, a thoroughly corrosive habit in any society, however pious the motive. I realise many will disagree. Good luck. I hope it makes them happy, but it won't.

Read it all.

They've Always Been Telling Us Thatcher Was Evil...

Carol Thatcher, the daughter of the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is facing a possible ban from the BBC after referring to a tennis player as “a golliwog”. The incident occurred on Thursday night after The One Show when Thatcher, a roving reporter on the programme, was in the green room with its presenter, Adrian Chiles, and other members of the production team.

Using this kind of language to describe fellow human beings is completely dumb. But this was an off-air, unrecorded statement. That's where it should stay, and to ban Thatcher or make a big deal out of this is just platitudinous political correctness.

Round-up

1. Teen pop star Miley Cyrus is in the news as pics of the 16-year-old have surfaced on the net showing her poking fun at Asians. While last year's scantily-clad photos of the teen sensation caused outrage, this time round Cyrus and a group of male friends can be apparently seen pulling their eyes to mock Asians while one Asian-American sits among them.

Yes, seriously, this is news. I have a question, though: did the Asian-American sitting among them mind?

2. See here for an example of an astonishing bit of antisemitism that was aired unchallenged and un-condemned on mainstream American TV.

Eurabia On The Horizon

Did you read the news over the weekend that the Muslim population of Britain is increasing 10 times faster than the rest of the population?

There is no doubt in my mind that as this number increases, we will see increasing demands for more and more sharia to be implemented in this country. I also have no doubt that there are Muslims within the UK who are here for this exact reason: to make Britain into an Islamic state, not by terrorism or invasion but by demographic conquest.

How can I be sure? Because they have made this abundantly clear. Euro-Arab meetings in Venice (1977) and Hamburg (1983) led to the institution of joint policies deliberately designed to increase not only the number of Muslim immigrants to Europe, in massive numbers, but also the general influence of Islam in the European political and civil spheres. Muslim immigrants were never at any point encouraged to integrate into European society – rather, the Arab countries insisted they were allowed to bring their own culture – often antithetical with Western democracy – with them and spread it through Europe. At a 1974 meeting in Lahore, numerous Muslim countries announced their plan to increase the Muslim population of Europe in "demographic preponderance".

In 1999 Guiseppe Bernardini, the Archbishop of Izmir in Turkey, claimed that at a major dialogue meeting between Muslims and European Christians, a prominent Muslim leader announced: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you." In 1974, the Algerian leader Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory."

Europe is sleeping. Her dream is a lie. And if she doesn't wake up soon, she will die.

Palestinians Break The Recent Truce, Israel Retaliates

And the Associated Press act as if both sides are equally to blame.

Real (Obama-related) Racism Round-up

1. Man pleads guilty to Obama racism attack

2. A black American teenager had a rock hurled at him in Kelso on Sunday by a white teenager cursing both him and President Barack Obama.

3. Some idiot at a New York bakery is making cakes that are supposed to look like "black people".

As one commenter at the site says: "You know, it doesn’t much look like anything. Is he really meant to be a professional pastry chef? Geez, if you’re gonna take all that time and effort to make a racist cookie, do a good job at it. I bet Martha Stewart can make perfect looking hate filled cookies…"

Another commenter observes: "OH GOD where to begin? The glorious stupidity of the baker (”no one compained about my dead geese bread!”) The reporter sticking the cookie in otherwise unaware people’s faces (”Does this offend you!? DOES THIS OFFEND YOU!? ISN’T THIS OFFENSIVE?!)” The white people acting horrified and the black people not really caring..."

Hateful, Shameless Liars

The Jonathan Ross circus just goes on and on and on.

Now we have this article at the Daily Mail about Ross' latest "sackable" offense:

The family of an 86-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer condemned Jonathan Ross yesterday after he cracked a joke about having sex with her.

Here is the content of this "tasteless" joke:

Ross, who earns £6million a year, and his producer Andy Davies were discussing how they had spent their time during the suspension.

Mr Davies, 43, said he had done some bricklaying in the garden of his villa in Spain but kept getting grabbed by a frisky 80-year-old woman.

He said: 'There's a woman in the village who's getting on a bit, keeps trying to kiss me. Older woman, very older woman. She keeps grabbing me.

'Every time I see her now I have to run indoors. She's apparently got a thing for younger men. She must be about 80, I reckon.'

Ross declared: 'Eighty, oh God! I think you should, just for charity. Give her one last night, will you? One last night before the grave. Would it kill you?'

Now, how tame is that? You will find many much cruder jokes in a Carry On film. This is a joke about a "frisky old woman" that follows on logically from the conversation they were having; it is NOT "tasteless" or anything of the kind.

But that doesn't stop the bribed buffoons from coming out of the woodwork. Here, for example, is the old woman's son: "It is offensive. My mother's mental health should not be a subject for comedy..." It WASN'T, you bloody tool! Her dementia was never mentioned. It was not even known to anyone until the News of the World purposely went to Spain after the event and found out. And as was the case during the "Sachsgate" affair, the BBC received no complaints following the broadcast (although it did get some, I hear, after the incident gained media attention).

The coverage of the Ross affair by the media, and by the Daily Mail in particular, has been an absolute disgrace. They are literally going out of their way to lie and break every journalistic principle in order to pursue a hateful agenda against one harmless man. It is absolutely disgusting, and all involved (except Ross himself) should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

Round-up

1. Here's some poll results about American attitudes towards racism following the Obama inauguration.

2. Here is both a new RAW Watch and a "subtle racism" alert.

Sheer Outrage

Geert Wilders, the courageous Dutch politician who directed Fitna, is to be prosecuted by a Dutch court for "hate speech".

You can read the details on this sickening decision here, as well as Robert Spencer's important analysis here.

As Wilders himself observes, “This is a black day for freedom.”

Getting Up The Noses Of The "Guilt-Tripping White Folks"

A superb piece by the usually-right Richard Littlejohn on Trevor Phillips' statement that Britain is the least racist country in Europe, covered yesterday.

Round-up

1. The police should no longer be accused of institutional racism, the UK's equalities chief has said. In a speech marking 10 years since the Stephen Lawrence murder report, Trevor Phillips is expected to say the UK and the police have changed massively. He says that Britain is "by far the best place in Europe to live if you are not white".

Expect some civil rights group to come out now and furiously declare that Phillips has got it all wrong, and that Racism is Alive and Well in Britain today.

2. A case of clear racism:

Three Boston (USA) men, bitter about the election of the nation's first black president and furious in their belief that minorities would gain more rights, torched the partially built church of a black congregation just hours after Barack Obama's landmark victory, authorities said yesterday.

"We did it," one of the men said, "because it was a black church."

Meet Mr. Ibrahim: Islamophobe

I had to laugh at this piece by Muslim columnist Salaam Abdul Khaliq, in which he defames Raymond Ibrahim - author of the excellent "Al-Qaeda Reader", a collection of never-before-translated writings from Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri - as an "Islamophobe". The first half of the piece is simply full of smears and ad hominems, but I thought I'd critique the few genuine objections he actually has to Ibrahim's work and do some refutin' on a Thursday afternoon.

[Radio host Larry] Mantle let Ibrahim run amuck quoting verses from the Quran ad hoc and out of context, saying for instance that the verse "there is no compulsion in religion" was reprobated, meaning canceled out, by verses of war in what is known as "naskh."

Of course, he quoted Qur'anic verses "out of context". Muslims use that one all the time, but they never normally provide any examples. Khaliq tries to here, but fails because he simply fumes over it as if Ibrahim made this all up by himself, and doesn't attempt to correct his faulty understanding of the verse.

To begin with, I highly doubt that Ibrahim said the verse was "reprobated", as Khaliq claims. It's more likely that he said the verse was abrogated - and this is at least partially in line with mainstream Islamic theology. The Qur'an itself introduces the idea of abrogation: “Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?” (2:106) The great Muslim scholar and historian Tabari (d.923) defines abrogation as “what God abrogates regarding the precept of a verse which He changes, or for which He substitutes another, so that what is lawful may become unlawful and and what is unlawful may become lawful; what is permitted may become prohibited and what is prohibited may become permitted.”

So was the "no compulsion in religion" verse abrogated? This is not actually the most common view, although the early Muslim commentator Mujahid, as well as some Muslims today, hold to it. But we also have to bear in mind that another Qur'anic verse, 9:5 - also known as the Verse of the Sword - says: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” In other words, fight them until they become Muslims.

So how do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory verses? Here is Tabari again to explain: “Arab society was compelled to enter Islam because they were an unlettered community, having no book which they knew. Thus nothing other than Islam was accepted from them. The People of the Book [Jews and Christians] are not to be compelled to enter Islam if they submit to paying the jizya [poll tax] or kharaj [land tax].” So in other words, it is perfectly OK to compel pagan tribes to convert to Islam; this verse simply forbids Muslims from doing the same to Jews and Christians, who have to be subjugated under Islamic rule instead, paying special, discriminatory taxes.

And let's be clear here: Tabari is not viewed by the majority of Muslims as an "extremist". Mahmoud Ayoub, a Muslim professor of Islamic studies in Canada, says that Tabari's commentary on the Qur'an is “a valuable landmark in the history of this discipline. All those who came after Tabari have relied heavily on his work and acknowledged their debt to him.” So I would expect Khaliq to quickly denounce both Tabari and Ayoub as "Islamophobes", also.

Ibrahim was given free reign to unabashedly spew lethargic tirades with impunity, shamelessly proclaiming that if Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, were alive today, he would do what Bin Laden is doing now.

It's not such a crazy assertion. If Khaliq has not already done so, I suggest he read Ibn Ishaq's eighth-century biography of the "Prophet", and find out what he did to the Banu Qurayza and the Jews of Khaybar.

Ibrahim also implied that American Muslims presented a danger to American society because their faith teaches them to kill their enemies wherever they are and by all means necessary.

Knowing Ibrahim's work, I seriously doubt that he "implied" any such thing. Islamic law does not command that Muslims kill their enemies wherever they are (except in the case of pagans, as noted above); it commands them to either convert or subjugate them as dhimmis under Islamic law. And to say this is NOT to imply, overtly or otherwise, that all Muslims agree with this or want to do this. It is not "Islamophobic" to point out various unsavoury teachings in Islam, as long as we do not prejudge all Muslim individuals based upon them. Islam is an ideology, and ideologies should not be free from criticism, legitimate or not. That so many Muslims seem to believe their faith should be given special protection from all critical scrutiny is very telling.

Anyway, Khaliq goes on to refer even to Muslim apostates such as Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish as Islamophobes, and states piously that "[m]any icons of Islamophobia before Ibrahim who sought to make a quick buck by viciously maligning Islam and Muslims sold their souls and ended up as dejects, discarded and washed out has-beens with no credibility and no respect." Sure, Khaliq, you just keep dreaming.

It should be clear that this columnist's piece is just another example of an unscrupulous Muslim reacting indignantly to true statements about Islam. Salaam Abdul Khaliq needs to learn to take criticism from those less ignorant than he, and keep his mouth shut about aspects of his religion which he clearly knows nothing about.

Round-up

1. This is interesting: The BBC and other broadcasters have overcompensated for their shortage of Black and Asian executives by putting too many ethnic minority faces on television, according to an Asian BBC director.

His comments, made yesterday during a Royal Television Society speech, came on the same day that equalities minister Harriet Harman announced plans to make it legal for a company to promote a black or female candidate over an equally-qualified white man.

2. An important piece from Stephen Glover at the Daily Mail:

Which is the most shocking example of racism we have learned about in the past week?

Is it the video of Prince Harry, made in 2006, in which he refers to a fellow officer cadet as a 'Paki' and tells another Army colleague that he looks like a 'raghead'?

Or is it perhaps the revelation that his father Prince Charles addresses a polo-playing Asian friend by the nickname of 'Sooty', which is apparently perfectly all right by the gentleman concerned, whose real name is Kuldip Dhillon?

Or might it be the case of a young Englishwoman called Lucy Newman, who was punched to the ground in Aberdeen and very badly injured, apparently because she was English?

Although you will have heard and read a great deal about Prince Harry and Prince Charles, you probably know little or nothing about what happened to Ms Newman, and her fractured cheekbone and damaged eye nerves, for the simple reason that the media have barely reported the incident.

And yet it could easily be argued that the attack on her was by far the most serious and disturbing example of racism.

It was the only case of the three in which something nasty actually happened as a consequence of a racist attitude. Prince Harry and Prince Charles used mere words.

Lucy Newman's attacker hit her in the face after saying: 'Get back to England.' The police are treating it as a racist incident, and they could hardly do otherwise.

Sooty And Company

Prince Charles has been addressing an Asian friend at a polo club as 'Sooty' for decades, it emerged yesterday (this following the Prince Harry scandal).

Here's a question: Who cares? The fact that this guy is referred to as Charles' "friend" dispels any doubt that he is somehow racist. Critics will state that the usage of such language shouldn't be tolerated because of its demeaning connotations, but there is no reason this should be the case. No malice=no racism, simple as that.

Here's another question: How do we know the nickname was racial? I mean, we don't know all the facts here; isn't it possible (and this isn't a serious suggestion, but it demonstrates that facts can easily be misrepresented by the media and their sources) that the name is a reference to this little fellow?

And one final question: Which cretinous "anti-racism" group is wasting everyone's time dredging up all these "shocking" (and rather late) revelations?

Priorities

While everyone gets in a tizz over Prince Harry using the word "Paki" (a word which has been used in a derogatory way against Asians - but has also NOT been used in that way, as in this case), I tend to be far more offended by stuff like this,which has been going on for over a week now with nothing like the same kind of outrage spewing from our liberal media.

It's all a matter of priorities.

Why Israel MUST Win

See here.

ABC and Secret Racism

Here's a piece with some more information and background on the ABC special about racism I posted about yesterday.

Round-up

1. This ABC article describes an experiment in a New Jersey deli where two "actors" "portraying" Mexicans tried to buy sandwiches with broken English, and another actor playing a racist store-clerk told them, "Get back in your pickup truck with the rest of your family." The experiment was to test how the other people in the deli, who didn't know the incident was staged, reacted.

It's easy for ABC to present their results as troubling, since some subjects seemed to approve of the racism or at least be indifferent to it. However, it is worth asking why they had to set up a situation at all. Surely if racism is as common in America as they would like us to believe, they wouldn't need to set something up; they could find examples of this kind of thing all over the place without having to provoke them.

On a good note, it's clear that the majority of people who witnessed the experiment actually stood up in favour of the victims. It's also funny that the customer who displayed the most virulent racism was.....black.

Oops.

2. Says the author of this article: "It was a surprise when the Sarasota County School District's second-highest ranking administrator charged last month that he's a victim of racial discrimination in the workplace."

Why was it a surprise? The author explains:

Nelson is black, and his employer, the Sarasota County School District, is not known for having an abundance of black administrators at high levels. And so, I would never just assume he could not be dealing with racism there, no matter that he has a plum position second only to the superintendent. Stranger things have happened. At some institutions, people have been set up to fail, and a boss could be a conniving racist who wants to make life unpleasant for anyone of the wrong color.

Only, in this case, I have trouble imagining that anyone would think anything like that about White. And that's not even the biggest problem with Nelson's charges.

They include claims like not being told about a meeting, being barred from taking an out-of-state trip and being stalled while replacing his secretary. It reads, to me, too much like an obsessed, turf-guarding bureaucrat imagining snubs at every turn. And that seems more so after reading White's responses, which shred each complaint as either factually wrong or way off base.

But even if some snub was real, it is still hard to figure how Nelson decided racism had anything to do with it. There is nothing in his memos that explain what made him think so.

It seems the desperate, manipulative lies are coming in thick and fast.

3. A gang of thugs in Basingstoke beat teenagers from the Nepalese community with baseball bats in a suspected racist attack.

There is no evidence in the article that this was racist, but I have no problem with keeping it open as an option. What bothers me, however, is this line at the end of the story:

Chief Inspector Jill Baldry, commander of the Basingstoke and Deane district of Hampshire Constabulary, said: “If during the course of the investigation the incident is discovered to have been a racist crime it will be dealt with accordingly to the highest possible standards."

What??? You mean to say that if it is found to NOT have been a racist crime, you WON'T deal with it to the highest possible standards?

I wonder whether the victims would testify that being smashed over the head with baseball bats by racists is worse than being smashed over the head with baseball bats at random.

Some political incorrectness...

There is no way this is "racist", but undoubtedly some would call it such. That's why I'm posting it here, in defiance of the PC Brigade.

The Simpsons - Indian style:

Night Garden Becomes Day Garden

Not suitable for children

On the face of it, a small furry doll from a magical secret world seems an unlikely subject for a row about racism. Yet the BBC has found itself under fire about the colour of Upsy Daisy, central character in the children's programme In The Night Garden.

Parents have complained that while she has dark skin on screen, an Upsy Daisy doll on sale in toy shops at upwards of £28.95 is much whiter. The BBC has denied any sinister motive, but yesterday it revealed that the doll was to be withdrawn in favour of a new version more faithful to Upsy Daisy's on-screen hue.

This appears pretty indefensible. I can't imagine any possible reason why the manufacturers would do this except out of the assumption that people won't want to by a "rasta" doll. One might say shame on them, but one could also say: that's business.

Nitpicky?

This writer complains because our "linguists" have yet to come up with the perfect term to describe Obama's skin colour. Seriously. He's not black and he's not white, says the author, so what do we call him? This is, apparently, "racism embedded in language at the deepest level."

Tellingly, they also say: "Why can’t the linguists come up with 50 words to accurately describe color in the same way the Inuit have 50 words to describe all the varieties of 'snow?'" But in fact, the Inuits have hardly any words to describe snow, and even if they have many, we have more. See here.