Uninformed perceptions
In a very old post, now a bit outdated, the Chinese spoke of "strategic misdirection", referring to the U.S. policy in the area of Tibet.
That's another topic.
People like to have simple heroes and villains and that comes out in so many ways. It's easy to see Brown and Nu-Lab as the villain for the simple reason that they are the villain or one of the villains, selling our country down the drain to Europe and plunging us into astounding levels of debt because of their ambitious panacea. You can look at Afghanistan, Vietnam and Iraq and the U.S. will do very nicely as the villain in the eyes of a billion Muslims round the world, this view syndicated by the network of Imams.
We can listen to the sound of a prayer call at dawn in Clapham and wonder what the hell Britain has come to. The Muslims are the prime target in this country, apart from the politicians with their slavering jaws and snouts in the trough.
Always we are directed to cast some group as the villain. Who does the casting?
Here,
here
and here.
The group that always remains hidden does the most damage and having said this, you can smile indulgently and say Higham's off on another his rants about Them, whom hardly anyone, despite the Sonus articles, despite all the evidence presented, even despite warnings from U.S. presidents and other leaders around the world, believes exists.
It's the oldest trick in the book to strategically misdirect a people's ire. France and Germany did it mutually in 1914 for that nakedly prearranged war, designed to create abject conditions under which other agendas could be pushed. It was the case with communism in Russia. It's ever been the way and the communist bogeyman, though quite real, was also more than useful, just as the unworkable Star Wars plan was useful in taking a stick to the Soviets.
When people who are under the yoke of a system which still follows primitive practices, based on extreme violence and fearmongering from its own druids, are shown, ad nauseam, the infamy of the United States around the world, there is a tendency for people in Egypt and Indonesia to get out in the streets and cheer when two jets fly into a World Trade Center.
How could those people, kept in a primitive state of dependence, understand that when one talks of America, there are a number of quite different Americas? There's the Socialist Panacea America about to plunge that land into crippling debt in the next eight years, there's the cynical True Enemy America that Woodrow Wilson, Ike and others were so frightened of and then there is Middle America, from where just under half the readers of this blog come, just under half also coming from Britain.
No people in themselves, at the lower echelons, are necessarily evil.
But a people strategically misdirected, their media manipulating them into outrage in response to the induced cutting of available money and jobs in the economy, e.g. the expenses scandal, people observing what they see about them, these perceptions reinforced in media articles, are going to be quite ready, fed up, with barely suppressed anger, to inflict violence on the detested targets. In this country, the Muslim and black populations [two separate entities] are going to feel a little worried, as might women by the way.
It deflects anger from the politicians.
And how many times throughout history have the immigrants been the target - convenient scapegoats or in the case of Hitler's Germany - the Jews, however true or untrue their supposed crimes were? At Rothschild level - as guilty as hell and at the level which actually got exterminated - no more guilty than any other people who have their own prejudices and foibles.
Manipulated, again manipulated, led from one disaster to the next - that's what we all are, that's what the productive section of the community is induced into. So this is a passionate plea not to take it out on the people at ground level. When a large family of Muslims presents itself at the Gates of Heathrow, those daughters, sons and grandparents are not here to take over Britain - they're here for a better life. They don't understand that a large proportion of the population might take a jaundiced view of them.
The problem is the system they've nominally been subscribed to, not them themselves.
Tolerance and co-existence
My own bona-fides.
I'm a WASP, [not so] pure and simple and I need issue no apology for that. This is my home. However, I was once engaged to a Muslim overseas and was aiming for a similar state later with a second lady [non-bigamous, by the way]. Two girlfriends at one time or another were Muslim. I've worked for Muslims and taught Muslim children, as well as teaching in Jewish schools.
None of these people harboured any jihadi or zionist ideas in the same way that I've never harboured any crusading ideas. We got on famously and got on with life. In fact, about a year after 911, the American Ambassador in Moscow visited our town in Russia to find out the secrets of how Muslim and non-Muslim can co-exist.
One of those ways was by the intermarrying between the Russians and Muslims over time and that town had produced, by the way, the type of exotic female beauty that only such a union can produce. Of course there were crazed musselmen calling for jihad and Sharia law but they got about the same attention which the Khassidic Jews do in Israel.
Quite frankly, almost no one was interested in political or religious strife and that is the whole secret to peace - not to get too religious, except in one's own relationship with one's Maker.
I believe that there are many, maybe the majority in Britain and America, who would feel the same way - that we should just live and let live. My neighbourhood shop here is run by Pakistanis. I've never witnessed any words of hostility in that shop - quite the opposite and I'm sure any new immigrants who come to fit in, work and assimilate, are in a similar position.
No one seems to have an issue with it.
The Left-liberal media
And yet there certainly is an issue with Islam in the public arena and quite rightly so. There are two problems - the system itself, addressed below and then the Left-liberal media, such as the BBC, which is as biased as the Left-liberal and global socialist hegemony across the world, from Obama through to institutions of learning, even mighty Harvard and the appropriately named Faust. With these people, there is a process of debate which runs thus:
1. Do not address the question asked;
2. Take personal offence immediately and attack the whistleblower as being racist, sexist or whatever "ist" fits the bill, without having to address the issue itself;
3. Introduce, in a flood of emotion, various buzzwords like "tolerance", "democratic" or "fair-minded", neither defining them nor allowing that the other side might be motivated by these same feelings, speaking of what "we, Britain" believe in, owning the high moral ground and leaving only the base motivation for those opposed to the Leftist panacea;
4. Organize and send trolls to the media and across the blogosphere to mock the whistleblowers and marginalize them as dangerous kooks.
An example of this blind intolerance, masquerading as tolerance, was Stephen Sackur in Hard Talk, who refused to listen to what his guest Geert Wilders was really saying but wished to impose his own understanding upon the Dutch MP.
"You want to impose what you see as acceptable Dutch culture," said Sackur, imposing his own view.
He's talking, mind you, to a Dutch MP rated as the most popular in the Dutch parliament and lecturing him about a Dutch issue with particular local elements to it, though the broader issue is Europe-wide.
Geert Wilders is on the record as saying that Muslims are welcome as long as they do not participate in action designed to either bring down or reconstitute Dutch society along the lines of Sharia law. He says it is unacceptable that women should be mistreated, as in the time of Mohammed, in that the Netherlands is supposedly a modern, western society based on humanism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
Let's skip over the "Humanism" bit for now. Humanism and humanitarianism are two entirely different things.
The whole thrust of his stance was that there are Dutch traditions and Dutch values and so immigrants and visitors willing to assimilate and accept the values and heritage of the dominant culture - Dutch - are welcome. But trying to impose alien values on the host country or run a parallel system of law and culture is way out of order.
This was the crux of the matter. He was at pains to say that the dominant culture, the traditional heritage is the one which should prevail, as it should in any country in the world.
The standard retort from Sackur was to make out that there were no intrinsically "Dutch" values and that what Geert Wilders was putting forward as "Dutch" values were, in fact, nothing more than a concoction of Geert Wilders' mind.
The overweaning vanity of the Left's attacks! The possibility that the huge popularity the man enjoys in his own country might just be because his country aligns itself, to a greater or lesser extent, with those values, did not get airtime.
Those with the "big tent", "all welcome", "let's tolerate anyone, no matter what and fund them while they're here" mentality say it's impossible, in this multicultural society, to determine what British values are.
Oh really?
Well, come with me and let me enrol you for a month in any English department in schools of extended English learning in Russia and you can learn what British values are, if you happen to have forgotten them. Because in these schools, in texts written by British educators from Cambridge et al is set out quite clearly what British values are.
One textbook widely used, Britain Today, has no problem whatever with the concept which the Left-liberals over here seem to have. For example:
Don't call anyone from the Celtic countries in Britain English. This won't be appreciated.
These texts address immigration, the reading habits of Brits, job figure breakdowns, attitudes of Brits from a series of interviews and even how to define the north-south divide in England. Russian school children seem to have no problem with the idea of what it means to be British - it only seems the Left of this country has that problem.
The school where I was Prep Head here had applications from many Commonwealth countries and again - the parents sent their children over for a British education and to learn British values. So this British Left attempt to throw the hands up in the air and claim, "Oh, it's impossible to say what British is and nor do we wish to say what it is because we're on this all-inclusive roll," is absolute bollocks.
Foreign parents send their kids here for precisely the reason that they know what British values are, what British opportunities are and somewhere along the line, somewhere in this most human of motivations, silently, without any fanfare, an insidious political system, masquerading as a religion – Islam – also worms its way in.
Misunderstanding IslamIslam, first and foremost, is not just a religion, with precepts for living, such as the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. It's far more than that. It has religious, legal, political, economic and military components, all interlocked, all-consuming for followers, either willing or press-ganged and Geert Wilders states that simple truth. The Asia Times, hardly anti-Islamic, having dealt with Kant and Ali Sina's extreme view of Islam as not being a religion at all,
touches on the issue :
In an emotionally charged atmosphere, precise thinking is needed. Kant was wrong, but wrong in a way that helps clarify the problem. Ali Sina and other Muslim secularizers are just as wrong. I shall argue that Islam is both a religion and a political ideology. Religion is what makes Islamic political ideology so dangerous.
Islam ... seeks to prolong the life of traditional society indefinitely, by extending it through conquest. I refer here to mainstream Islam, ignoring marginal currents such as Sufism. We find in the practice of mainstream Islam hoary roots in traditional society, in strange juxtaposition with the most aggressive sort of universalism. For traditional Muslims, religion cannot be separated from the most trivial requirements of everyday life, I showed in the case of the teachings of Iraq's Ayatollah al-Sistani (Why Islam baffles America, April 16).
Islam acknowledges no ethnicity (whether or not one believes that it favors Arabs). The Muslim submits - to what particular people? Not the old Israel of the Jews, nor the "New Israel" of the Christians, but to precisely what? Pagans fight for their own group's survival and care not at all whom their neighbor worships.
A universalized paganism is a contradiction in terms; it could only exist by externalizing the defensive posture of the pagan, that is, as a conquering movement that marches across the world crushing out the pagan practices of the nations and subjugating them to a single discipline. If the individual Muslim does not submit to traditional society as it surrounds him in its present circumstances, he submits to the expansionist movement.
In other words, Islam, by definition, is expansionary and all consuming in nature. If moderates choose not to pursue that goal, due to their secularization, as in Turkey, Indonesia and parts of Russia, this changes the people but it never changes the goal of Islam itself. In Britain,
there are other considerations as well, not least in non-Muslim reaction of the defensive Muslim community:
Oxford, once home to the likes of C.S. Lewis, now houses a giant Eastern Islamic Studies Center. If this were the only Islamic addition to Oxford, the mood would be less somber, but when Oxford citizens are forced to awake every morning to the Muslim call to prayer with the full consent of the Church of England, nothing short of conquest has taken place.
Britain's Muslim demographic is now so dominant that the British government recently began to allow Islamic civil and religious law, known as Sharia, to be enforced along side British law. But if religious tolerance is good, why is this a problem?
Simple - this is not an issue of religious liberty. Islam is not designed to co-exist with western civilization. It is designed to conquer it.
Getting hard data on the Muslim plan of domination, as distinct from non-Muslim reaction, is like finding a needle in a hastack but
this, from Germany, can at least be quoted:
The Muslim Brotherhood—led by Ramadan and Himmat[23]—sponsored the construction of the imposing Islamic Center of Munich in 1960,[24] aided by large donations from Middle Eastern rulers such as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia who, according to a 1967 Sueddeutsche Zeitung article, donated 80,000 marks.[25]
The Ministry of Interior of Nordrhein-Westfalen states that the Islamic Center of Munich has been one of the European headquarters for the Brotherhood since its foundation.[26] The center publishes a magazine, Al-Islam, whose efforts (according to an Italian intelligence dossier),[27] are financed by the Bank al-Taqwa.
According to the interior minister of Baden-Württemberg, Al-Islam shows explicitly how the German Brothers reject the concept of a secular state.[28] Its February 2002 issue, for example, states:
In the long run, Muslims cannot be satisfied with the acceptance of German family, estate, and trial law. … Muslims should aim at an agreement between the Muslims and the German state with the goal of a separate jurisdiction for Muslims.
Organizations with alleged aims other than those stated:
Of all of Zayat's financial activities, the one that has attracted the German authorities' greatest suspicion has been his association with officials of Milli Görüş (National Vision, in Turkish). Milli Görüş, which has 30,000 members and perhaps another 100,000 sympathizers,[41] claims to defend the rights of Germany's immigrant Turkish population, giving them a voice in the democratic political arena while "preserving their Islamic identity."[42] But Milli Görüş has another agenda.
While publicly declaring its interest in democratic debate and a willingness to see Turkish immigrants integrated into European societies, some Milli Görüş leaders have expressed contempt for democracy and Western values. The Bundesverfassungsschutz, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has repeatedly warned about Milli Görüş' activities, describing the group in its annual reports as a "foreign extremist organization."[43]
The agency also reported that "although Milli Görüş, in public statements, pretends to adhere to the basic principles of Western democracies, abolition of the laicist government system in Turkey and the establishment of an Islamic state and social system are, as before, among its goals."[44]
Is there any stated purpose of Islam? The aim of the second half of this post is to find out if there is anything solid which supports the contention or not and to admit if there's not.
Some quotes:
“Thanks to Hitler, blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians, revenged in advance, against the most vile criminals [the Jews] on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him for his revenge on them was not enough.” (Al-Akhbar (Egypt), April 18, 2001).
Muslim Clergy Voice, Claims to Jerusalem and the Need for Jihad: (DFJ-JanFeb00) “...The entire Islamic nation has to act to terminate the Israeli occupation of the holy city and strengthen in it the presence of the Murabitun [Muslim warriors holding the front lines].
It is the religious [Islamic] duty [Fardh 'Ein] today, of each and every Muslim male and female... “Both east and west Jerusalem belong to the Arabs and Muslims because it is a Waqf land. Our properties in west Jerusalem are more than 70% of its territory and Israelis do not in fact have any land in Palestine...” (Sheikh 'Ikrimeh Sabri, the PA appointed Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, in the Friday sermon in the Al-Aqsa mosque [November 5, 1999], Al-Hayat Al-Jadida November 6, 1999.)
Syrian Television, September 9, 1996 “Palestine is from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea”: , Hussein was asked what the boundaries of “Palestine” are. He replied that “all Palestinians agree that the just boundaries of Palestine are the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Realistically, whatever can be obtained now should be accepted and that subsequent events perhaps in the next fifteen or twenty years would present an opportunity to realize the just boundaries of Palestine.”
Ahmad Khomeini, son of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, says…Iran’s Islamic revolution has awakened all the Islamic countries… …Islam recognizes no borders. We cannot put off establishing Islamic governments and administering the divine laws. The objective of the Islamic Republic and its officials is none other than to establish a global Islamic rule… … Political means and methods may differ, but no revolutionary Muslim ever forgets the objective. {Ahmad Khomeini, in Kayham, Teheran, 11 January 1992}.
"Allah is the only one that must be worshipped on Earth, and the only way to guarantee this is to control all the land masses, air and sea and give Islam the proper channel to be heard by the people." (Sheikh Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Allah's Governance on Earth)
"We need to initiate the movement of Islamic revival in some Muslim country in order to fashion an example that will eventually lead Islam to its destiny of world dominion." (Sayyed Qutb)
“Once the Islamic state is established, the current rulers will be prosecuted, some will flee to the West but the West will not help them.. This is the end of every agent.” (Sermon Al-Aqsa Mosque, Friday, 26 May 2000)
“We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history.
The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.” (excerpts from a Friday sermon on Palestinian Authority TV. Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, sermon on May 13, 2005)
Fayiz Azzam in Brooklyn in 1989: “Blood must flow, there must be widows, orphans, hands and limbs must be severed and limbs and blood must be spread everywhere in order that Allah's religion stand on its feet!”
“Jihad is here. We must wage Jihad against the enemies of Allah here. The enemies of Allah are in our midst. They claim to be Muslims, although they are as far as can be from Islam. They call themselves "reformists" or "preachers," and say that we support the West. They are hostile to us on these grounds. .. My brothers, the danger is even greater. Even those people have become tools in the hands of the enemies.
Unless we face reality with truth, courage, and evidence, and if we do not stop all the transgressors, who try to distort Islam with their claims of reform and their corrupt progress - this will be dangerous. These people have been tempted by the West, and have been employed in its service. We are familiar with their relations with foreign elements. We are fighting them and will continue to fight them, and we will cut off their tongues” (9/25/2006 Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abd Al-'Aziz)
Hmmmmmm. So there's a prima facie case, at least, that certain echelons of the Muslim community are not as benign as the MCB would have us believe.
Islamicization by population growthIslamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called "religious rights."
The old enemy,
the CFR, claims:
The Muslim birth rate in Europe is three times higher than that of non-Muslim Europeans, which is declining, writes Omer Taspinar, the co-director of The Brookings Institution's project on Turkey. The Muslim population has doubled in the last 10 years to 4 percent of the European Union's population.
A counter claim is:
The Population Reference Bureau reports on a fascinating study by demographers who found that Muslim women who immigrated to Western Europe showed significant decreases in their total fertility rate over the past few decades. While the total fertility rate for Muslim women remains significantly higher than their European counterparts, the gap is closing between the Europeans and the immigrants.
Wiki has:
According to the German Central Institute Islam Archive, the total number of Muslims in Europe in 2007 was about 53 million, including 16 million in the European Union.
It's very difficult to get accurate statistics and when one googles "muslim birthrate statistics in europe" or any variation of these words, one gets only political rhetoric, half trying to disprove some video which came out about the Islamicization of Europe and the other half claiming stats without their source.
I'm not prepared to go with those but
this one seems to quote a source:
Muslim, Sikh and Hindu households in Great Britain are larger than households headed by someone of another religion. In 2001, households headed by a Muslim were largest, with an average size of 3.8 people, followed by households headed by Sikhs (3.6 people) and Hindus (3.2 people). A third of Muslim households (34 per cent) contained more than five people, as did 28 per cent of Sikh and 19 per cent of Hindu households.
Jewish, Christian and Buddhist households were smaller – each with an average size of 2.3 people. These groups have an older age structure than the other religious groups, and contain a higher proportion of one-person households. Over 30 per cent of these households contained only one person, compared with between 13 and 15 per cent of Sikh, Hindu or Muslim households.
Muslim households also contained the highest number of children. A quarter (25 per cent) of Muslim households contained three or more dependent children, compared with 14 per cent of Sikh, 7 per cent of Hindu, and 5 per cent of Christian households.
The differences in the presence of children reflect partly the younger age structure of the Muslim population, and the intentions of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women. The average intended number of children among Pakistani and Bangladeshi women was 3.4 and 3.6 respectively, compared with 2.4 among Indian women and 2.1 among White women.
Dr.
Peter Hammond [Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat], is hardly neutral in this. He's an evangelical Christian of the old type, the type which puts itself under fire to deliver the Bible to outlying areas of Christianity and so though his remarks are quite possibly true, it needs to be borne in mind where he's coming from:
"When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to "the reasonable" Muslim demands for their "religious rights," they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works -- percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007).
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:
United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%
At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:
Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. (United States).
France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5% Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris -- car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam -- Mohammed cartoons).
Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%
After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%
At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:
Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%
From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:
Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%
Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%
100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:
Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%"
Implications of Sharia LawAmerican Thinker listed some of the implications for a community if Sharia Law is imposed. Clearly, different countries have different approaches and I know this from a comparison of the way Islam is followed in Russia, compared to the way it's followed, say, in Iran. I have a fair idea of the Indonesian situation.
What follows is, quite clearly, a selective list of the more extreme elements but it is legitimate to include because it's not what people do when all is going well which constitutes their mindsets - it's what happens under duress and how far people adhering to certain life principles would go down an inhumane path.
Some articles at the end of links appear to have been removed now:As early as 1978, Saudi Arabia
sentenced nine Britons to flogging for drinking alcohol. The webpage has a photo of how the police carry out the sentence.
In 2001, Iranian officials
sentenced three men to flogging not only for illicit sex (see Quran 24:2 and this
article analyzing the verse). They were also flogged for drinking alcohol.
In 2003 in Saudi Arabia, an Australian was
sentenced to be flogged and imprisoned for smuggling alcohol.
In 2004, the Canadian Islamic Congress recommends
banning alcohol from college campuses, even for the faculty.
In 2005, an Iranian judge
sentenced another drinker to eighty lashes. Fortunately, the sentence was commuted to one lash with eighty twigs bound together. The man was sick, so the judge
changed his sentence to this one hit instead of eighty different lashes.
In 2005 in Nigeria, a sharia court
ordered that a drinker should be caned eighty strokes.
Caned in front of the mosque for gambling. This was done publicly so all could see and fear. Eleven others are scheduled to undergo the same penalty for gambling.
In 2004,
Rania al—Baz, who had been beaten by her husband, made her ordeal
public to raise awareness about
violence suffered by
women in the home in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi television
aired a talk show that discussed this issue. Scrolling three—fourths of the way down the link, the readers can see an Islamic scholar holding up sample rods that husbands may use to hit their wives.
Wife beating. The more this cleric explains the reasonableness of the law and how a woman is also permitted to beat a man by getting another man to do it, the deeper they dig the pit. There should be no beating of any kind in the first place. In a civilized society, violence is simply not condoned.
In 2003, in Saudi Arabia a man had two teeth
extracted under the law of retaliation.
In 2003, a court in Pakistan
sentenced a man to be blinded by acid after he carried out a similar attack on his fiancee.
In 2005, an Iranian court
orders a man's eye to be removed for throwing acid on another man and blinding him in both eyes.
It reads like a horror story.
Here are some severed hands. In 2002 Amnesty International
reports that even though Saudi Arabia ratified the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture) in October 1997, amputation is prescribed under both Hudud (punishments) and Qisas (law of retaliation).
AI has recorded thirty—three amputations and nine cross—amputations where the alternate hand or foot is mutilated.
The Quran says:
5:33 Those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to spread corruption in the land should be punished by death, crucifixion, the amputation of an alternate hand and foot or banishment from the land: a disgrace for them in this world, and then a terrible punishment in the Hereafter, 34 unless they repent before you overpower them: in that case bear in mind that God is forgiving and merciful. (Haleem)
It may be difficult to accept, but the hadith says that Muhammad tortured these next people before he executed them. This scenario provides the historical context of Sura 5:33—34. The explanations in parentheses have been added by the translator:
Narrated Anas: Some people . . . came to the Prophet and embraced Islam . . . [T]hey turned renegades (reverted from Islam) and killed the shepherd of the camels and took the camels away . . . The Prophet ordered that their hands and legs should be cut off and their eyes should be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that their cut hands and legs should not be cauterized, till they died. (Bukhari, Punishments, no. 6802)
In February 1998, the Taliban, who once ruled in Afghanistan,
ordered a stone wall to be pushed over three men convicted of sodomy. Their lives were to be spared if they survived for 30 minutes and were still alive when the stones were removed.
In December 2004, Amnesty International
reports:
An Iranian woman charged with adultery faces death by stoning in the next five days after her death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court last month. Her unnamed co—defendant is at risk of imminent execution by hanging. Amnesty International members are now writing urgent appeals to the Iranian authorities, calling for the execution to be stopped.
She is to be buried up to her chest and stoned to death.
This gruesome hadith passage reports that a woman was buried up to her chest and stoned to death:
And when he had given command over her and she was put in a hole up to her breast, he ordered the people to stone her. Khalid b. al—Walid came forward with a stone which he threw at her head, and when the blood spurted on his face he cursed her . . . (Muslim no. 4206)
First, the Muslim deserves death for doing any of the following (
Reliance of the Traveler pp. 597—98, o8.7):
(1) Reviling Allah or his Messenger; (2) being sarcastic about 'Allah's name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat'; (3) denying any verse of the Quran or 'anything which by scholarly consensus belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it'; (4) holding that 'any of Allah's messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent'; (5) reviling the religion of Islam; (6) being sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law; (7) denying that Allah intended 'the Prophet's message . . . to be the religion followed by the entire world.'
The most frightening part of it is that the laws of the host nation itself are allowing this to go on:
In 2005, The Muslim Council of Victoria, Australia, brought a lawsuit against two pastors for holding a conference and posting articles critiquing Islam. Three Muslims attended the conference and felt offended. The two pastors have been convicted based on Australia's vilification law.
That is plain wrong.
In Iran an academic was
condemned to death for criticizing clerical rule in Iran. The rulers assert that he was insulting Muhammad and Shi'ite laws. He was charged with apostasy.
This
analysis tracks the application of apostasy laws around the world, citing many examples.
One of the most tragic and under—reported occurrences in the West in recent years is the existence of a
Sharia court in Canada. Muslims are pushing for a Sharia divorce court in
Australia as well.
ConclusionUntil this post, I've not gone all out on this matter though I'm clearly not neutral, due to the material I've cared to present. As stated above, there's little point in addressing how a group of people react when things are going normally. Even Al Qaeda have breakfast in the morning, just as we do. The thing to address is what a group is essentially about and how much they are prepared to condone.
What Islam condones, in its extreme form, is deeply disturbing and I would suggest that it has absolutely no place in western society. It is polarizing in a society which has already become polarized in so many other ways and while the right to worship as one wishes is a cornerstone of the libertarian stance, even the Libertarian-Lite stance which recognizes the rule of law, I believe Hammond's analysis is sound - that the extent to which the repugnant aspects of this world view and its practices come to the fore is proportional to the population percentage which embraces it in any given community.
There is no hatred in this for fellow citizens who are Muslim and I'll continue to befriend any Muslim who's a nice guy. My beef is with the system, which is obviously not benign in what it has on its books, allows and even encourages in the Mosques. Just as with the Indians and the Chinese populations in Malaysia, just as with the Fiji situation, it does come down, in the end, to the "clout" which sheer numbers give to the movers and shakers within any highly organized world view.
The system needs to be opposed with all legitimate means at our disposal, short of violence. In fact, legal and administrative moves might just preclude the very thing we fear - mass violence in the streets, a most un-British thing, aside from Wat Tyler and various uprisings through history.
Anyone coming into this country or being born into it, needs to adopt and assume our traditions, our heritage and our culture,which are quite easily defined. This country has always had a vaguely pagan element to its Christianity, it's always been pragmatic and polite, always a bit superior in its manner and it's been based for millennia on the Judaeo-Christian precepts and a developed system of law and system of education.
That's what Britain still represents, despite the rewriting of the textbooks from where children gain their sense of their own heritage, textbooks which are going to be replaced with the restoration of the proper texts, once the pendulum swings back that way and people wish to rediscover who they are. They can start with a short trip to Russia to pick up texts freely available over there and slowly, we might once again become capable of getting our heads screwed on right about what it means to be British.
This is the Britain that any Brit grows up in or adopts when he/she comes here. The dog wags the tail, the tail does not wag the dog, nor does the tail trot along beside the dog, presenting itself as an alternative dog in its own right. The insidious and cynical playing on British tolerance, in order to further the crazed agenda of world religious domination, needs to cease henceforth, not least for the safety of its own devotees.
I'm not suggesting that we do as the Romans did in slaughtering the druids at Anglesey, quite the opposite in fact. I'm suggesting, in very strong terms, that we use all legal means at our diposal to halt this pernicious sytem which has already dug its roots into this island nation and to remind any Muslim, Sikh, Nigerian, New Zealander or whoever that the right to remain on these islands carries with it certain obligations.
