It’s not uncommon for Giles Fraser to take an opportunity to have a pop at atheism and the dreaded Strident New Atheists, and this little foray into excuses for believing in imaginary friends is not untypical: The Battle to Believe in God
According to Giles, according to atheists, God …
“… was killed by thinkers: philosophers and scientists, especially those associated with the Enlightenment. First, God died in theory, only after which He died in practise, when ordinary people eventually caught up with the ideas that were first formulated in the study and the laboratory. The only problem with this, as Alec Ryrie astutely observes in a new book on the rise of atheism, is that “death-by-philosophy … is a poor fit with the actual chronology of western secularisation”. Atheism, he asserts, was alive and well before the Enlightenment.”
This is not news to atheists that have done their homework, particularly the ones that Giles names later. In fact, Dawkins and others insist that everyone is born an atheist, and most only have a very specific religion thrust upon them in childhood, and a rare few invent religions (rare, relatively speaking, of course, since there are many thousands of religions and sects). Given evolution’s description of human origins and our emergence among and from other animals, Giles would have to assert that animals are religious, unless only Humans invent gods, … or gods are choosy about which animals they reveal themselves to, though they don’t seem so choosy about how often and in how many ways they reveal themselves, if indeed they do.
The article title and sub-heading sum up the problem with the article.
The battle to believe in God
Don’t kid yourself that atheism is a modern invention — it’s as old as religion
Correction. It’s older than religion. It’s what humans and pre-humans and other animals with brains had going on in their brains before some humans invented religion. It’s a-theism:not theism, like a-symmetry is not symmetry.
Having poorly characterised atheism, Giles at one point, in this part book review, part dig at atheists, gets around to telling us what Christianity is about, according to Spufford (and Ryrie and Giles).
“The proper starting point is not the question of God’s existence, but what he calls “the HPtFtu” – or, “the human propensity to fuck things up”. The propensity extends to our relationships, our attempts to be good, even to our rationality. Emotionally, Christianity begins within the unfixable realities of human life, its tragedies and absurdities. Even its blood-soaked history, including that of the Reformation, is just yet another example of the HPtFtu. … Christianity grows out of the broken and unfixable. Its USP is to be found within and alongside the stuff that doesn’t work … Virtuous and idealistic atheists are at work all over the place, but it is observable that a surprisingly large number of believers are at work with the dying, the demented, the addicted, the institutionalised and the very impaired and afflicted, where the best that can be done is to love for the sake of it”
It doesn’t take religion to realise that HPtFu, or that humanity is Fubar. It does take religion to milk suffering for all its worth to the coffers of the church. Too often the religious agenda has been to fix the sinner’s soul rather than fix the problem the sinner is suffering from, the latter being a means to an end. Not to say there aren’t genuinely nice, thoughtful compassionate believers out there, but are the same people so limited they need God to do it? Or has religion simply acquired the monopoly on helping the suffering. (Hint: it hasn’t – medicine cures people more than prayer does.)
And I’m not sure how Giles thinks Dawkins managed a career in Evolutionary Biology if he and Spufford really do think “Virtuous and idealistic atheists are at work all over the place“, as if they had no time for anything but to rebut religion’s fantastical and often harmful claims.
The Hippocratic oath requires doctors do no harm when healing. The hypocritical oaths of religion requires no such commitment, and religion has been known to be quite enthusiastic about saving souls by condemning bodies to death. Allahu Akbar, for good or ill.
“I suppose that is why I read the New Atheist critique of Christianity as often obviously correct, and yet strangely irrelevant. What they take to be a kind of philosophical or quasi-scientific explanation of things is often much more like a cry for help. And to accuse a cry for help as being intellectually confused is a peculiar kind of response.”
I find it a confused kind of response to pain to tell the sufferers, “Pretend to believe in this fake stuff and it might make you bear the suffering a little more easily,” distracting a child that’s about to receive an injection by waving a cuddly toy in front of its face. An elixir salesman’s fake medicine.
Homeopathy for the soul.
And, Giles ends with …
“Now, of course, you may completely disagree with my characterisation of Christianity. Many will. But what Ryrie’s engaging book suggests is that the battle over God is really a battle about a certain sort of emotional literacy. For the Christian life is as much dependent on arguments about God’s existence as birds are dependent upon ornithology.”
“Many will” – Yes, including many religious people.
Giles makes a mockery of the religionist rejection of the analogy of religious belief that atheists often put forward: a belief in fairies. Yes, Christianity as described by Giles does not depend on the existence of God, so emotional literacy could just as easily depend on the non-existent fairies, … or Allah, or any other imaginary friend that Giles does not believe in. So, what makes a Christian? Not believing in Christ as much as not believing in Odin or Allah, but pretending to believe in Christ anyway?
And of course this conception of religion that Giles presents is dishonest … he knows full well that many believers really do believe God exists. Try following people that have suddenly realised they’ve been scammed, how that shocks them when they self discover religion’s empty promise. The “many will [not accept his characterisation of Christianity]” plausible deniability card up his sleeve is just another cheat.
Let’s translate Ocham’s Razor into Giles-Speak: You better believe there is a God that doesn’t exist, because if He were to exist, though He doesn’t, you’d be good to go, but if there isn’t such a God, which there isn’t, you’ll be disappointed when you don’t end up in the literal hell that doesn’t exist?
And it’s no more than a perverted intellectual elitism that supposes the naive child-like plebs will be satisfied with the emotional sweeties, while the epicurean geniuses of theology dine on the sophistication of arguments for God’s existence. The religious intellectuals HAVE dedicated themselves to arguments for God’s existence. It’s only in the 21st century that theists like Giles are pretty much forced to concede “New Atheist critique of Christianity as often obviously correct, and yet strangely irrelevant” – yes, quite, “It doesn’t matter that I believe in BS, because I don’t care.“
Giles may be sincere. But then he has no choice in the matter, because being aware of one’s own intellectual bloopers, or giving up religion, are the unbearable painful cracks that religion, as he elucidates here, is well equipped to paper over
But it’s intellectual duplicity, even if self-imposed. A greater intellectual sophistication should be seeing the irrationality of religious belief, and helping the plebs get wise to the fairy tales. The intellectual failure of the theists is they ought to know full well how silly it is to latch on to just one of the myriad of gods that have been invented.
To speculate about origins, to wonder if all reality is an impersonally causal series of events, or a teleological invention, is a reasonable metaphysical exercise. But to choose one of the many supposedly revealed fantasies, to call oneself a Christian or Muslim, as if some ancient goat herder really did receive a message from a creator of the universe, and play out that game, while keeping atheists at bay by saying you don’t really believe in the literal claims, is no better than the fraudsters that caused the financial crash.
If you want to be ‘mystical’, there’s another option. It’s not beyond the wit of an intellectual to take up the selected cherry picked nice philosophy of Jesus, along with that of the Buddha, as well as atheist philosophers, and disassociate them totally from the fantasy. They could give up the religious mumbo jumbo and to stop conning the plebs that there’s some mystic truth they are incapable of seeing, so they’d better giving up quizzing the literal reality of this God thing. Trouble is, if they were honest with the flock they’d have no justification to dress up on a Sunday.
Not content with merely pulling The Lamb’s wool over the eyes of parishioners, Giles’s and other theists have to demonise the opposition, with what amounts to no more than propaganda about angry atheism.
“What Ryrie’s account achieves is an explanation as to why atheism often remains so angry. That it is angry seems undeniable — from the vituperative nature of exchanges on social media, to the hardly concealed fury of its leading lights, Dawkins, Hitchens etc, there can be little doubt it is driven as much by passion and righteous indignation as by following the consequences of cold clear dispassionate rationality. “Reason is a slave to the passions” as David Hume rightly noted”
This is a dishonest use of Hume’s ‘passions’, which isn’t about anger, but merely the idea that is now a fully credible understanding of consciousness: the lack of free will, that ideas appear as if from nowhere, but actually from the stimulation of the brain by bodily functions. The ‘passions’ in this understanding are well presented by neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio (The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness).
And where atheism is angry it has every right to be. Religion is the quintessential bully that persecutes and brutalises victims, then cries foul when the victim bloodies the nose of the bully.
For millennia witches and heretics have been burned at the stake, while hapless parishioners were scared out of their wits and manipulated by parsons, priests, monks and mullahs.
Civil wars were fought over religious differences – and it’s no good claiming that there were other political reasons, not religious ones. It doesn’t help religion’s cause to point out that a supposedly benign or even beneficial belief system can be put so easily to division and death as it was during the Christian Catholic and Protestant wars, the Crusades, the Islamic invasions from Spain to India, and the later ‘Troubles’ of Ireland, the Islamic terrorism.
Even now, throughout the Islamic world, atheists are persecuted, and in too many states, atheism is a crime punishable by death at the hands of believers that believe nothing like Giles’s theological scam on a scam. In the UK homophobic Islam patrols school gates and justifies the grooming of young girls, as Mohammed did. Damned right atheists are sometimes angry.
Speaking of Islam, reading Giles’s representation of atheism and atheists is very much like reading that of other popular believers, like Mehdi Hasan. Yes, the Mehdi Hasan who really does believe Mohammed split the moon, and in other miracles. Yes, the Mehdi Hasan who revealed that to the not so angry more astonished Dawkins. Yes, the same Mehdi Hasan, who, like that other fraud, Reza Aslan, will tell you you don’t understand Islam, because it’s nothing like atheists present it, … all the while his co-religionists butchering gays in the name of Allah for exactly the reasons atheists say they do. Oh, yes, what happened to Reza Aslan and his lovely Indonesia, where lashings à la (Allah?) Quran 24:2 are a regular occurrence?
It’s odd that these fake theists declare that only atheists and extremists believe in the literal truths of the holy books. No, atheists do not believe in the literal truths of these books. Atheists merely point out the obvious fact that too many theists do. Only the fake theists try to square the circle, by claiming the truth of the holy books (the inerrant truth of the Quran), while simultaneously denying the very words written therein – but only the inconvenient words, remember. The nice worlds can be read as-is.
Whatever this piece says about Christianity, it contains the usual mischaraterisation of ‘angry’ atheism, while it unironically tells us all about the greater angers of the religious.
“For Ryrie, a scholar of the Protestant Reformation, the passion in question has its roots in the protest against the abuses of the church of Rome, of well-padded priests feathering their own nests, of the bullying authority of the Papacy…”
Yes, quite. The ‘angry’ passions of the religionists have always been more ideological, more pathological, more psycopathic than any atheist, simultaneously defrauding the plebs.
Oh, and let’s head this one off at the pass before Giles or some other theist manages to slip some whataboutery through … “But, Stalin!” Not so fast. Yes, Stalin was an angry brutal ideologue. But it was not his atheism that drove the brutality of his ideologically inspire psychopathy.
While Stalin and other communists and fascists had the benefit of 20th century weapons of death, religions have been killing millions with the ultimate deity of doom, the authority of the autocratic arbiter of heaven or the abyss.
Not that the lovely Giles is a religious madman that would go in for the sort of cruelty that has been the mainstay of religious power for millennia. On the contrary, he’s one of my favourite public theists, and can be rational enough, on other topics.
But there are plenty of his coreligionists that are madmen, and religious ideologues can find all the justification they need in their holy books … you know, the holy books that tell of the gruesome demands of a God that doesn’t need to exist, the same God of passions that Giles’s parishioners don’t require.
You don’t find suicide bombers citing the Humanist Manifesto. Angry atheists. Ha!
But Giles’s fake of a fake God is in truth, as Steven Weinberg pointed out …
“The god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character.”
Unless, that is, you cherry pick the relatively sparse interesting and nice stuff, and ignore the vast amounts of hell, damnation and slaughter, and the boringly obvious nice stuff.
Tell me. How, in these horror shows of belief, do the nice believers pull off that particular scam on a scam? Based on what theologically obtuse reasoning do they justify their claims that the nice stuff in these books is the real deal, while the bad stuff is history, metaphor, old hat, from ignorant times, myth, allegory?
The trouble for the nice guys like Giles is that the same game can be played by ISIS: all the grotesque punishment is literally true, and the nice stuff is metaphor for what happens after death, after you’ve met the punishments prescribed in the holy book here on earth.
Both tacks seem equally plausible readings, as does the irrational but obvious requirement that belief in a God that revealed a book requires you accept all his words as-is, contradictory or not.
The consequence of this intellectually conflicted nonsense that is religion is as Weinberg also pointed out in his thoughts on God’s believers, that Giles thinks don’t really require a God to exist …
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
And Giles has the nerve to complain as ‘angry’ any atheists that point this out.
To repeat Giles’s point …
“For the Christian life is as much dependent on arguments about God’s existence as birds are dependent upon ornithology.”
Yes. You don’t need arguments for God’s existence when blind faith and duplicitous rhetoric is quite sufficient for self delusion. You may be fooling yourselves, but you don’t fool us.
To try and pass this whole religion thing off as a benign homeopathic remedy, God diluted so there’s not an atom of him left, yet the water holds his memory, … is a scam. It is put on the shelves of therapy with the real medicines of the sciences of the brain-mind-life; and on the shelves of genuine religious belief in existent fantasy friends. It’s sellers ought to be intellectually prosecuted for fraud.
Moderate Muslims, there are only so many ways you can twist this, only so many hoops you can jump through …
Perhaps there really is only one true Islam …
“There’s only one Islam, and all self proclaimed Muslims are Muslims, including ISIS, and Ahmadis, … and we all agree on the punishments prescribed in the Quran and Hadith, for apostasy, theft, sex outside marriage, adultery, …. I just don’t like to admit it to non-Musims.”
Except, of course, you don’t all agree. So, maybe there isn’t one true Islam …
“There’s diversity in Islam. ISIS are Muslims, but not practicing my kind of Islam. I don’t agree with … and I don’t agree on the punishments prescribed in the Quran and Hadith, for apostasy, theft, sex outside marriage, adultery, …. I know better than Mohammed, and I think that Allah has changed the rules.”
But usually, it’s something like this …
“ISIS aren’t Muslims, Ahmadis aren’t Muslims, … all those other self-proclaimed Muslims that happen to be an inconvenience to my claim that there is only one true Islam, while trying to distance myself from those other ‘Muslims’ that follow aspects of Islam in ways I don’t like (or don’t like to admit to) … well, they are not Muslims.”
Who gave you the right to say they are not Muslims or that they are doing Islam wrong?
Because I AM a Muslim. I should know. Whereas you, non-Muslim, are ignorant about Islam.
Who gets to decide who are true Muslims? What qualifies YOU to decide?
The scholars tell me!
How do I know which scholars are the right scholars to listen to?
Because they are the ones that I happen to think fit the kind of Muslim I want to be … err, though there is only one kind of Muslim, the kind that fits into the narrow band that I think won’t embarrass my religion.
Pity. This is all so embarrassing.
A Muslim Embarrassing Himself
This morning, as I started to write this, I thought I’d better go an dig up some examples, knowing there are plenty. I opened Twitter, and bingo! A gift from Allah?
First, Dawkins, one of the people I follow, had a tweet at the top of my feed, and the very first reply …
This seems like a reasonable response …
And, in turn, we have the usual nonsense …
Let that sink in …
“Not minimising anything. Just pointing out that any sane, moral, rightminded, peaceful individual can recognise …”
So, why do sane, moral, rightminded, peaceful individuals need Islam?
“The punishment for blasphemy in Islam is not death.”
Maybe not in YOUR version of Islam. But you know it is in some versions … which sort of makes a mockery of ‘one true Islam’, or any claims by ANY Muslim to understand Islam, when clearly, different Muslims have different understandings of Islam.
The One True Islam Embarrassment
K T Shamim’s bio reveals he’s an Ahmaddi Muslim … not allowed to call themselves Muslims in Pakistan, opposed by many other Muslims. But still, he thinks he knows the one true Islam.
“The true religion [Ahmadis claim there’s is the one true Islam] …. Don’t know which Islam these Muslims follow …”
So, there are multiple Islams? But how does K T know that his is the true one, and not the Islam of ISIS?
Hold on! It’s all very nice that K T likes the love and peace Islam, but how does he know that’s the right one? How come punishment and intolerance aren’t the one true Islam? Or why not both?
Really, why not both the peach and love AND the punishment and intolerance? Why are the nice verses taken literally and the nasty verses require excuses?
It’s not like I’m advocating this all inclusive Islam as system to follow. My point is, why can’t you just do peace and love WITHOUT Islam? Why stick with and try to a system in which so many declare the Quran inerrant and have to go to all this trouble to defend it … and let’s be honest … to LIE for Islam, to escape its violent nasty clutches.
This is the first of a series on Fallible Heroes – where people I follow, support, and respect, get it wrong sometimes. This may seem like a trivial case, but the last tweet in the final image expresses the importance of it – “I too want everyone to feel protected but discussion gets shut down with cries of ‘bigot’. “
[Feel free to tweet this … since I’m blocked for opposing extremists.]
I’ve followed Alice Roberts (not in a creepy way, honest) since her days on the UK TV programme Coast. Seen some of her other TV documentaries … and now she’s president of Humanists UK.
So, it was a bit of a disappointment to see the following exchange, since Alice’s response, in blocking rather than engaging – at least providing a link to some ready presentation of her views on the matter of transgender issues – leaves a vacuum that actual bigots could fill.
My interest here is not to support any positions that her interlocutor, Michael, might take, but to wish for a better response from the president of Humanists UK in trying to reach those that disagree with her. And, it is clear from other responses that Alice’s decision to block has not helped any case she might wish to make, but has simply affirmed, in the minds of those that disagree, that she has no position worth making. Bit of an own goal.
Yes, I know, she’s busy and can’t engage with every actual transphobe on the planet. But, the current understanding of trans issues is not a done deal, and there are many people with mixed views on the issue, and I expect quite a few in Humantsts UK.
So, what was the exchange? Here is part of it (link to the thread), which began with a question regarding trans issues … and in particular the conflict of interests that exist between cis women and trans women in some specific scenarios.
Alice responded to an assertion in another tweet (from someone else) about the binary nature of sex …
This is the point where it might have been helpful, in spreading the Humanist scientific, rational and kind message, had Alice pointed to some useful information that she thinks lays out her position on this complex subject. After all, Twitter is hardly the place, and surely this isn’t a new topic for Alice.
Actually, he did. It was pretty clear from the start that what was being discussed was the human issue of gender identity with regard to the issues that are currently hotly debated. And, if anything, Alice could be quizzed here about whether she was attempting to slip in the appeal to nature fallacy.
And then …
And, why is this block a problem? Because it leaves other’s with their echo chamber and promotes the idea that Alice isn’t really as committed to trans issues as she might have tried to imply.
Alice Roberts cannot be expected to engage in debates that will probably go nowhere, so that she chose not to carry on, seeing the lie of the land in the thread, her disengagement might have been the best option … but, it could have been done with more dignity and less of what appears to be petulance (whether it was or not in Alice’s mind). For example …
However, Alice does continue to subject, when it suits …
Sense indeed. But it still doesn’t address the actual issue, about humans, that eventually incited Alice to block. Those questioning Alice on this issue would really like to know how you square the circle here – which is, socially, how do we deal with the two conflicting (not always, but not never, either):
Allowing trans people to live the lives they choose.
Allowing women to live the lives they choose.
Do you remember when safe spaces for cis women to protect them from men – even though not all men are a threat to cis women?
Why can’t cis women have safe spaces from trans women – even though not all trans women are a threat to cis women?
Are there any trans women who fear other trans women? After all, some trans women are very much like traditional cis women, and those trans women need safe spaces from men too, … and by extension, from some trans women.
These are complex issues, and Alice Roberts cannot be expected to have all the answers (indeed, answers that would satisfy everyone are mythical beasts). But the block was disappointing, if only for the reason that the blocked person will not see a more reasonable debate going on.
Alice doesn’t say how she thinks this circle might be squared. Which I think is precisely the point Michael was trying to make, and which Alice avoided.
Nevertheless, Alice is a great president of Humanists UK, and this criticism on this particular matter of this block will not change my opinion on that.
There are some utterly bizarre interactions going on around Islam in the UK. There’s much guilt by association and incredibly dishonest smear campaigns, even coming from those that are often victims of dishonest smears themselves.
Nigel Farage was demonised as a racist for his UKIP Brexit campaign that saw him stood in front of a poster of economic migrants. It should have been obvious to anyone (because he explained it) that his point was that the images we were seeing throughout 2014/15 were predominantly of healthy young migrant men. Where were all the weak, old and infant refugees? Why had these men left them behind? These were legitimate questions, at the height of illegal immigration. So too was the question about the political ideology that many of the illegal immigrants were committed to. Even Angela Merkel had to face up to these realities eventually, as she shut down all the publicly expressed concern she could, and eventually had to stem the flow.
But then, when Gerard Batton announced the ‘consultation’ role of Tommy Robinson, Farage joined in the smears of Robinson and the guilt by association of UKIP. Personally, I see Robinson as a legitimate activist, but not a particularly good politician – too hot headed and not responsible enough to have him too close to the leadership of a party. But, he has definitely been smeared beyond any recognition of the person he actually is. So, it’s strange to see Farage take that particular stance himself – a convenient distancing of himself from someone he sees as lost to fair coverage and so dangerous to Farage’s personal agenda.
In another context we see long-term gay activist Peter Tatchell struggle to hold a rational position regarding Islam. He has joined with activists from Faith to Faithless (a part of Humanist UK) to encourage acceptance of homosexuality among Muslims in Britain. He too has demonised Farage and Robinson, and has played the dodgy alliance game of suggesting ‘persecuted’ minorities like gays and Muslims should unite against the right. Totally paradoxical since Islam is inherently conservative, and in many cases far right – so much so that explicitly liberal Muslims like Maajid Nawaz are demonised by organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain and 5 Pillars. Of course Tatchell’s hoped for alliance backfired when Muslim parents announced their own homophobia* is an essential part of Islam.
[*They declare they are not homophobic, and yet also insist that anyone that doesn’t like their bigotry is Islamophobic. The ironies mount up pretty fast in this sphere of human affairs.]
In a similar fashion we see Owen Jones denouncing the same homophobia among Muslim parents, yet also declaring as Islamophobes anyone else that dares to criticise Islam. Lately he has taken to building a chain of guilt from Tommy Robinson, to Douglas Murray, and on to Yasmine Mohammed, the latter being a thoroughly decent ex-Muslim that simply campaigns for the right for ex-Muslims not to be persecuted.
And it’s odd that Owen Jones cites the Muslim Council of Britain as an upstanding organisation in the same thread, when it is they, among others, that declare that Ahmadi Muslims are not to be considered Muslims, so continuing the persecution of Ahmadis that sees their mosques attacked in Pakistan, an Ahmadi killed in Glasgow by a Sunni from Bradford (for ‘insulting Islam’), and even very recently having a UK mosque provide leaflets requiring the killing of Ahmadis. What on earth is Jones doing siding with a conservative homophobic misogynistic religion? I doubt he’d have much in common with Westboro Baptists who seem to hold a similar view on homosexuality to many Muslims (a large number of UK Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal, at least … the less cautious will support the death penalty).
Elsewhere we have the Muslim prosecutor of Muslim grooming gangs on the Three Girls case also declaring other critics of Muslim grooming gangs to be Islamophobes, while his colleague and ex-police investigator Maggie Oliver, also of Three Girls fame, uncovers much police corruption around the cover up of grooming gangs and calls for ‘people power’ in response. Wasn’t Tommy Robinson and example of ‘people power’ in action?
And even though we see more and more Muslims acknowledging the problems in ‘our community’ they too still play the Islamophobia game: The Enlightenment of Saira Khan. Saira has been calling Robinson a racist for years, and yet she is just as explicit as he is, even more directly so, in her condemnation of those in her ‘community’ that transgress the bounds of decency by being a groomer or a terrorist.
Papers like the Guardian seem to alternate between articles that report on problems around Islam, only to follow up with an opinion piece by yet someone else that declares it’s Islamophobic to report on the problems around Islam. No surprise that Miqdaad Versi of the MCB has created a busy schedule for himself demanding, with some success, that news papers change the headlines of many of their stories so that thy are less ‘Islamophobic’.
It’s not as if the news about the news is consistent in this regard either. Owen Jones, again, expressed his Twitter indignation by declaring that stories about the young ‘angelic’ Christchurch terrorist wouldn’t happen if it were a Muslim terrorist – except that’s precisely what the news papers did regarding Jihadi John – so much so the Mail front pages for the two terrorists were practically identical.
Within Islam it doesn’t become any simpler – quite the opposite. Liberal-Moderate, Moderate-Conservative, Conservative-Fundamentalist, Fundamentalist-Extremists … overlapping circles of influence where the extreme ends totally denounce each other as non-Muslims, yet each circle makes excuses for and defends their near political neighbours. You have to wonder where all the 2 billion Muslims are, when so many Muslims declare fellow Muslims to be non-Muslims for their inadequate understanding of Islam. Meanwhile, we are told, “We are all Muslims”, under the unity of the Ummah … a monolith of Muslim creation. We are also told that Islam is a diverse religion, yet, oddly, all accept Allah, Mohammed and Quran – where all but liberal reformers insist the Quran is the inerrant perfect word of Allah, that is both easy to understand and yet needs scholarship to avoid all the nasty bits – nasty bits that are not there, apparently, despite what you actually read in the Quran.
“Nothing to do with Islam” we hear. Well, if that’s so, how is it Islamophobic for non-Muslims to point to the Islamic texts that ISIS cite? How is it that many of those that joined ISIS became more religious, more Islamic, according to those that knew them, before tipping over the edge into radicalism and extremism?
The complexities of all this, the smears, the alliances, the shear irrationality of it all, need a damned good Venn diagram of overlapping appreciation. But I fear it would be so complex it wouldn’t make it any clearer.
We need more rational debate, and more honesty, less conflating Islam with race – what nonsense that is. We have a long way to go.
Hirsch’s political agenda is to smear critics of Islam. Same for newly woke Frankie Boyle. Sarah Pascoe and Richard Osmon are there for the entertainment value and are a couple of hapless woke celebrities along for the ride.
Headline: Has Racism Been Normalised?
Yes. Both by actual racists and the supposed anti-racists such as those on this show.
The discussion at this point revolves around grooming gangs and the opposition to someone like Tommy Robinson having a say in the matter. Let’s pick it up with Afua’s point about how serious the Muslim grooming gang problem is:
… there are really serious problems that led to them [the girls … or the culprits?] being abused.
Yes. Specifically Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, as pointed out by the following, when they too are not being accused of being racists.
Voices on Muslim Grooming Gangs
Andrew Norfolk, Times journalist, who sat on the story for a couple of years for fear of being racist, allowing who knows how many other girls to be groomed before he broke the story.
The Sikh community that for years pointed out the grooming of Sikh girls by Muslim grooming gangs, but were ignored.
Ray Honeyford, head of Drummond Middle School in Bradford, became the target of a campaign by an action group involving a number of parents (not unlike the ‘No Outsiders’ head of Parkfield now, by homophobic parents in Birmingham).
Labour MP Sarah Champion, kicked off the Labour front bench for speaking out (you won’t hear much, if anything, of Jeremy Corbyn … search his Twitter feed for Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, etc. not a word)
Labour MP Ann Cryer, who while getting some support from some Labour colleagues, had to suffer the smears of being a racist by others – simply for caring about the girls.
Maggie Oliver, police investigator in the Rochdale 3 girls case. Oliver was prevented from investigating the problem in Manchester and since gone on toe actually call for ‘people power’ because politicians, the press and the police had actively covered up the problem for years.
You can butter it up all you like, and blame Robinson as much as you want, but you are lying when you do.
Here’s Maggie Oliver directly accusing her police chief of covering it up. [Update 2019-07-16 – In her recent book release interviews she points out the grooming continues and many groomers remain free of prosecution]
If you want the longer and more harrowing tale of just THREE girls (1400+ in Rotherham alone … estimated) then watch this:
Saira Khan, who has made similar comments to those of Tommy Robinson … on the TV show, Loose Women. My one issue with Saira is she’s still too afraid, or too blind, to see the problem: The Enlightenment of the Brave Saira Khan
Nothing to do with Islam?
When you’re done digesting what Saira Khan has to say, go back to Afua Hirsch:
They [Tommy Robinson and co] are only interested in this minority (Muslims)
Yes, why is that? How come Robinson and co aren’t interested in Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, or even ex-Muslims, … or even Ahmadi Muslims?
Let’s go to Ahmadi Muslims – I don’t know that Robinson has EVER criticised them.
But you know who has?
Other Muslims. Ahmadi Muslims are not allowed to call themselves Muslims in Pakistan, and they are persecuted there and have their mosques attacked – BY MUSLIMS.
In the UK, we had Ahmadi Muslim Asad Shah, killed by a Sunni Muslim from Bradford.
And when the Ahmadi Muslims held an interfaith peace rally, other faith leaders turned up – but the Sunna and Shia Muslim representatives refused to do so.
And even recently we have had the BBC reporting that a mosque in Britain has been making available leaflets demanding the killing of Ahmadis.
And the Council for British Muslims on their own site state that Ahmadiyya are not Muslims, rejecting the Ahmadi Muslim right to identify as Muslim.
How come we don’t hear much from Afua Hirsch on that problem? Or does racism only count when Afua Hirsch sees it in one particular direction?
Afua Hirsch Lies
they try to create a narrative that all Muslims need to be accountable for the actions of the paedophiles …in one or two towns
Wow. Let’s get the first lie out of the way before addressing the very cause of this problem of ‘Tommy Robinson’.
No, It is not the case that the narrative is about making all Muslims accountable *for the actions of the paedophiles*. What many critics DO ask is that Muslim organisations and local Muslim communities stop trying to cover the crimes up.
Any other working class grooming gang, if found out in a local community, would find that the gang members would be lucky to escape with their lives and their genitals intact, so outraged would the local community be. So, from early in the piece …
… does Tommy Robinson really care about the vulnerable girls?
Yes. Why on earth would you think otherwise, unless your own agenda was to smear him. His own relative was groomed. So, yes, damned right he cares about the girls. That’s how working class communities would react if press, politicians and police, and other local community members were trying to over up any ‘white’ grooming gangs. And, what’s more, the town wouldn’t be safe for them to return after their sentence were complete.
Which has not been the case for many of the Muslim grooming gangs, where family and friends support them, even shouting support in trials; where after serving their sentence they return to their communities with no problem, and are even seen by their victims; where protecting the good name of Islam is far more important to the community than the victims.
Here comes the necessary disclaimer: NOT ALL MUSLIMS. There must be many Muslims that are horrified by these acts by members of the ‘community’. The problem for many decent members of the Muslim communities is that it’s actually risky for them to speak out if they live in those communities. Ask Saira Khan, who has received terrible abuse, … FROM PEOPLE ON THE LEFT AND MUSLIM COMMUNITIES.
Let’s get back to the really egregious part of this dreadfully dishonest programme
And they are towns where some prosecutions have taken place, but where we have no real idea of the historical unreported cases, and no idea of how many other towns may have been affected. On some occasions the victims have been driven to other towns to ‘serve’ the Muslim men of those communities.
THIS has been the problem that has created Tommy Robinson: the utter stupid denialism of people like Afua Hirsch. She can’t even leave her “there are really serious problems” sit without diminishing it with “one or two towns”
White Paedophiles – Whataboutery
We never talk about white paedophiles
What utter BS.
Let’s start with ‘white working class‘ paedophiles. Do you know when we talk about white paedophiles? When they are rooted out by long winded police investigations into their secretive gangs.
What’s different about the Muslim grooming gangs? They do it openly, in front of schools, in shops and taxi firms in the ‘local community’. They do it with police knowledge, and social services knowledge, and press knowledge, and local council knowledge. They do it with impunity.
THAT is why you have Tommy Robinson, and specifically why Tommy Robinson gets so much support from the working class.
But, of course, what about paedophile politicians and celebrities, like Jimmy Saville. YES! It’s the same press, police and politicians covering up their crimes as it is the Muslim grooming gangs – for entirely different reasons of course. YES. That’s the point. Cover ups.
THAT is why you have Tommy Robinson, and specifically why Tommy Robinson gets so much support from the working class, because not only have the press, politicians, press and celebs been covering up Muslim grooming gangs, they do it for their own too!
Whataboutery of Numbers
even though the majority of paedophiles are white
Not proportionate to population size.
The estimates vary, but of course you’d expect a 90% white population to produce more paedophiles that the mere 5% population of Muslims.
But that’s not the point, is it. The point is, that even allowing for variations in population estimates, for street grooming gangs 84% are Muslim. And, it gets worse. For race targeted (white non-Muslim) victims, by Pakistani Muslims, it is almost exclusively Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs (small clusters of other Muslim grooming gangs such as in Somali communities do exists).
Find ANY substantial reports where white paedophiles are targeting Muslim girls, or Sikh girls, or Hindu girls, or girls of other nationalities at all – have you heard of ANY?
The ONLY other significant perp profiles is where girls are trafficked by criminal sex gangs, and sex tourism in the far east, … and powerful people protected by politicians, press and police.
Who Defines a Legitimate Debate?
it’s frustrating when he (Tommy Robinson) is given a platform by mainstream media …because it’s not a legitimate debate
Well done on giving him a platform then, on this programme, you utter clown. How many programmes have we seen where critics of Tommy Robinson have given him far more air time than he has created for himself.
But the real problem is caused by NOT giving a platform to more reasonable voices, like those listed earlier, that have been talking about this for decades.
YOU are part of the problem that has created Tommy Robinson.
And, you think voicing an opinion about the cover up of Muslim grooming gangs is NOT legitimate?
We’ve got to a really dangerous position where now, if someone like me who is anti-racist is in a debate there’s this need to put me on against a racist …
YOU and pundits like you, and the press, and police and politicians have created Tommy Robinson by your neglect.
Robinson started campaigning against Islamic extremists over a decade ago, and grooming gangs shortly after, … after he gained EDL notoriety and other people from around the country reported to him how grooming gangs where operating freely, just as they had with his relative.
If we were talking about rape, you wouldn’t have me on with a pro rape activist
What the heck are you talking about? YOU are asserting that Robinson is racist, with no evidence whatsoever. YOU are equating his criticism of Islam, Islamists and Muslim grooming gangs with racism. YOU are fabricating the debate that isn’t being had.
And, I don’t know if you noticed, but the subject matter IS about rape and other abuse, and Robinson has been opposing it. And YOU are opposing Robinson’s opposing of it. How twisted can you get.
It seems Twitter isn’t too keen on tweets that point out extremism and highlight the other victims of extremist that don’t receive much support from the MSM and pseudo-liberal feminists in the West.
I suspected the problem here is their shitty algorithms that can’t detect the sarcasm in the first sentence. But then, follow ups and other sources make it look more like a political agenda at work, or perhaps a targeted complaint.
Here’s an email from Twitter, along with the offending tweet from me.
No clue as to why it’s a problem, it just is. I’m not sure how Twitter thinks it is going to rid itself of tweets and accounts it doesn’t like simply by pointing to a general list of issues it finds problematic. Who the heck reads that, before they find they have transgressed?
From what I recall my tweet was a response to someone … I think this one:
Ex-Muslims have done nothing to diminish the suffering at Christchurch. So, if anything I found this to be an extremely offensive tweet targeting ex-Muslims.
While many Muslims have been using the Christchurch incident for political purposes, even diminishing Islamic extremism in the process, ex-Muslims have done nothing more than challenge the gullible pseudo-liberal non-Muslim women that have been wearing the hijab in solidarity, apparently totally uninterested in the suffering of women forced to wear it.
The image I included will have been a murdered ex-Muslim in Bangladesh. This is a publicly available image that brings home the brutality of the violent extremism I oppose.
My First Appeal
Here’s my first appeal. I expect this won’t cut it.
The tweet flagged was a reporting events that actually happened. It describes the plight of Muslims and ex-Muslims at the hands of extremists. It’s denouncing extremists. Why is it suspended?
We’ll see how it goes …
Summary Execution from Twittarabia
No details, and apparently unrelated to the tweet cited for the suspension.
I responded to someone’s targeted abuse of ex-Muslims, and supported the right of ex-Muslims to feel safe, or not to be intimidated into silence by targeted abuse such as that from @agnostroccan. And I gave an example of the brutal silencing of ex-Muslims. I was actually supporting those that wish to express opinions that are diverse in relation to the opinions of those that would oppress them.
And, what a surprise … no mere suspension, the account has gone.
So, what’s happened here? Is it the case that @agnostroccan has been kicked off Twitter, by Twitter, for targeting abuse at ex-Muslims? Or, is it the case that @agnostroccan received a lot of backlash against that hateful tweet, and closed the account themselves … and perhaps complained to Twitter, and those that actually objected to the hateful tweet are the ones being suspended?
Who knows. Unfortunately Twitter isn’t too good at resolving these problems, because nobody ever gets to know what’s really going on.
My Second Appeal
Once they close the ticket, after telling you the account is permanently suspended, there’s no re-opening the ticket. You have to start a separate ticket.
So, I did. I asked for the specifics of the offence, given that the charge of harassment has nothing to do with the particular tweet cited in the original suspension.
Their next response? Same useless response.
My Third Appeal
You will not answer my questions that ask you for evidence of why my account is suspended. You state a reason but provide no evidence. Where is your evidence I’ve engaged in targeted abuse?
Still Waiting – 13 Days
Another Appeal
Yes, I have access to this email address.
Further more, I dispute the (inconsistent) charges made at the time of and after the suspension. Furthermore, the suspension flies in the face of sentiments expressed by Jack Dorsey, Vijaya Gadde on the Joe Rogan show. And, you have not provided any specific information about how exactly I broke the community rules.
Regards,…
My First Suspension
The image below was from my first suspension … pointing out that some moron didn’t understand what ‘alt-right’ means. Never did find out the specifics of what was wrong here. I was on holiday and just caved and deleted the tweets. Should have fought it then.
Twitter Bias
Several people have been highlighting the problem with social media platforms operating under a political bias.
Tim Pool and others have exposed the bias of Twitter, and the free wheeling runaway train that is the Twitter team for evaluation.
And here’s a report from the right wing site Veritas that exposes Twitter’s tendency to let this bias run.
Nothing Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde said refuted any of this.
The term ‘Cultural Racism’ could mean a number of things. Let’s start with a couple of issues around the component terms that should be easy to acknowledge.
Racism – I’m taking this as a given. It exists. In all societies as far as I’m aware, and the differences amount to who the targets are, the power and numbers differentials between the groups that engage in it and are victims of it.
Cultural bigotry – I think this obviously exists too. There are some people that reject other cultures, or innocent aspects of other cultures. Sometimes it’s based on pure ignorance, and sometimes a deep xenophobia, or indeed based on the association between the ethnicity and the culture, which in turn often comes back to ignorance.
Combining these you could have ‘Cultural Racism’, but I’m not entirely sure how much that differs from simple racism.
In fact there is a danger here, and we witness its effects now, and often. And that danger is the conflation of racism with disagreements over the value of ‘elements’ of cultures.
Note here the distinction in that last sentence, between ‘elements’ of cultures, and whole cultures. Humans on this planet are far more uniform than we sometimes tend to think, and our differences are not as complete as a superficial comparison might suggest. If you can imagine the most different culture you know to your own, there are still going to be elements of that culture that your culture shares, or which are not sufficiently different to your own such that you would reject everything about the other culture.
This idea that one can accept at least some elements of other cultures does not rule out the possibility of one’s racism. In fact it might be that one’s racism includes a condescending love for elements of other cultures. From a white British perspective I’ve seen examples in some favourite British holiday destinations, like Spain, where a love of sun, siestas and Spanish food provides little disguise the contempt displayed for Spanish locals. And who doesn’t like an ‘Indian’ (See Good Gracious Me “going out for an English”). Or Mexican hats. Or … but we’re straying into ‘cultural appropriation’ territory, which I’ll put to one side for another time.
But what about Nazism? Yes, I know it was a short live ideology of early 20th Century Germany, with fascist affiliations elsewhere, but let’s be honest, not all Germans were Nazis, so disliking Nazism isn’t synonymous with disliking Germany or Germans. We get this. Why can’t we get it with other ideologies and cultures? Why can’t we pick and choose? Why can’t we be ‘discriminating’?
I do discriminate, and I discriminate against some elements of some cultures. I discriminate against the violent boozy laddish culture of Brits abroad. I discriminate against British Imperialist culture that tried to dominate the world for a few centuries. And I discriminate against elements of Christian culture that demands special privilege and deference for Christianity in our culture and in our government.
However, I’m a Secular Humanist, and with that comes freedom of belief. So I will not discriminate against religious beliefs.
But I will discriminate against religious action based on religious beliefs that tries to impose religiously motivated values that I don’t agree with on those that don’t want them. And, here’s the sticking point for many hypocrites, I feel the same way about Islam.
In fact I find more wrong with Islam than I do with Christianity. Not that some Christian groups can’t be as bigoted as some Muslim groups, but on balance I find the Islamic ideology particularly conducive to bad ideas and bad actions. And I find this to be the case even though many Muslims are themselves decent people that I have no problem with.
We have a problem with Islam, and it’s not my ‘Cultural Racism’ that determines that I have such a problem, it’s the nature of Islam that determines it. There are some ‘elements’ of Islamic culture that I don’t have a problem with at all, and in fact find them to be interesting and worthwhile. But, I find there are many more elements I do have a problem with.
But of course we have a relatively recent history of British Imperialism in India and what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh that fitted the ‘Cultural Racism’ meme pretty well. And that in turn led to many immigrants coming to the UK from the Indian sub-continent, on one route or another (including Ugandan Asians). That then, in turn again, resulted in more racism in the UK, in which we saw ‘Paki bashing’ as a symptom common among far right racist groups and football thugs in the 1970s. We also now have some notable campaigners against such racism. Kenan Malik being one; initially a man of the Left, but disgruntled with the Left’s response to the Rushdie affair. A another, younger, victim of the racism, Maajid Nawaz, took a different route, becoming an Islamist, but he too had a change of heart; he remains a Muslim but is staunchly secular and campaigns against all forms of racism and bigotry, but obviously focuses on Islamism, Islamic extremism and the far right.
This is the background in which you might think that the rational secular, and often non-religious, intelligentsia might rally to oppose all racism and bigotry, including that of religions.
I say you might think it, because from the 60s onward, when Christianity still dominated British religiosity, there were many progressive gains against the bigotry of religion. In other words, we discriminated against British Christian bigotry with enthusiasm.
By the late 70s, change was already under way. Many will remember with delight the night the Python duo, Cleese and Palin, took on Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood (the then Bishop of Southwark) in a programme hosted by Tim Rice, where they discussed the merits or otherwise of Python’s The Life of Brian. And, however you think that conversation went, even then it was noted by Malcolm Muggeridge that Islam was receiving special protection … out of fear
May I make another point here, which is rather interesting, which is if you had made that film about Mohammed, there would have been an absolute hullabaloo in this country. The antiracialist people would have risen up in their might. The same people who would have approved of this (Life of Brian), but would have said that (a film about Mohammed) was quite disgraceful.
Sadly, many of us secularist were so busy enjoying the special pleading of the Christians we didn’t really pay much attention to that point. Oh, how times have changed. I can’t now figure out, by today’s standards, whether that makes Malcolm Muggeridge an appeaser of Islam, an Islamophobe, or indeed a realist that saw the hypocrisy even then. Christians aren’t quite as bold as they were in pointing out the privileges that British Islam enjoys.
Of course Cleese was spot on with his reply
Your quite right Malcom. Four hundred years ago we would have been burnt for this film. Now, I’m suggesting we’ve made an advance.
And I’m now suggesting we had made an advance with regard to Christianity, but we have regressed with regard to Islam. And, that the accommodation of Islam goes above and beyond the noble intention of reducing racism, to a fawning submission, not even to Islam itself, but to the victim playing bullies of Islamist supremacism that are dictating the narrative on moral discourse to the point of persuading Western pseudo-liberals to self censor and suppress free speech on the grounds that if offends the religious sensibilities of religious bigots.
Wikipedia Page Authors’ Submission to Islam
I suppose you might like some evidence that it is the case that the regression regarding Islam is taking place. I offer you the Wikipedia page on ‘Cultural Racism’. This page, it seems, was originally based on a translation from Swedish. Sweden, a Western liberal country apparently hell bent on submitting to Islam.
Unsurprisingly this page suffers from one of the problems that social justice warriors love to point out, though apparently it goes unnoticed here, and that’s outright Eurocentrism. You will see throughout, that all the problems discussed are Western, European and White, and the only victims of note are Muslims, thanks to our Islamophobia.
Not a jot on the Cultural Racism in Islam, where the term fits like a glove. Nothing on the hate filled state of Pakistani Islam, that sees the persecution of Christians like Asia Bibi for ten years, before inciting violence against her on hear release from prison. Nothing on the Muslim-Hindu Cultural Racism that sees Muslims abducting young girls for forced conversion to Islam – not unlike Boko Haram’s tactic, and indeed not unlike Mohammed himself, who married a slave. How about something on the rising Islamism in Indonesia, where young people are submitted to the Quran’s imposition of one hundred lashes on an ever increasing frequency? Or perhaps the article could have mentioned the Cultural Racism in the Arab world, where Mulsims from around the world are treated as indentured slaves with their passports withdrawn, salaries unpaid, and, even in London, where house maids are virtual sex slaves to some Arabs. Maybe the many cases in Islamic states where women are prosecuted for sex outside marriage … when they report rape.
Cultural Racism against Ahmadiyya?
Not only is there persecution against all other religions and peoples throughout the Muslim world, there are some spectacular instances of it in the West, against Muslims.
Where is the discussion of the persecution, the Cultural Racism, of Muslims towards Ahmadiayya? In Britain an Ahmadi Muslim, Asad Shah, was targeted and killed by a Sunni Muslim who travelled up from Bradford to Shah’s home of Glasgow with the specific intent of killing Shah. And only in the last few days have we heard that a UK mosque has been distributing leaflets that call for the killing of Ahmadi Muslims. And, do remember that in Pakistan, a cultural heritage for many British Muslims, the Ahmadiyya are persecuted, killed and have their mosques attacked and destroyed, an not even permitted in law to call themselves Muslims.
And where is one of Britain’s largest Muslim organisations on this, the Muslim Council or Britain, of which Miqdaad Versi is a spokesman? Here we have their view of the Ahmadi:
In recent days a Catholic journalist has been investigated for misgendering a trans teen. But has there been an investigation into the MCB’s mis-religioning of the Ahmadi, who self declare as Muslims?
For that matter, the BBC report on the leaflets that call for Ahmadis to be killed doesn’t say whether or not the culprits have been charges with a hate crime, and incitement to murder, or indeed incitement to perform a terrorist act? The BBC does not say. It only says they have been warned.
Why is this?
Why is it that we are now told that pointing out all the Islamic extremism is tantamount to inciting far right terrorist attacks, while the endless complaints of Islamophobia and anti-Islam bigotry are not themselves further incitement to Islamic revenge attacks (we may have had at least one already)? If the news media, in their reporting of Islamic attacks, are culpable in the recent Christchurch attack on a mosque, in what way is Miqdaad Versi or MCB not complicit in the killing of Ahmadis, only the link between the CMB’s opinion on Ahmadis, the situation in Pakistan, and the actual persecution of Ahmadis is far more obviously linked.
Isn’t this a far more concrete example of ‘Cultural Racism‘, if anything is?
Cultural Racism of the Left
It isn’t just the Islamist organisations that are pushing this agenda of excusing Islam of it’s own bigotry. The Left in the West are pure gullible idiots – a topic worthy of a post in its own right.
I have criticised religion for decades, and in the earlier years it was mostly targeted at Christian bigotry – remember Westboro, the far right religious group that ‘hates fags’? Why isn’t Islamic homophobia considered far right?
Rarely, if ever, did I get any pushback from non-Christians for such criticism of Christian bigotry, for most were on board with such criticism. Whether it was opposing the Christian churches on homophobia and misogyny (re women and gay priests and bishops), or simply disagreeing with theists on the metaphysical matter of origins of the universe.
Not so when it comes to Islam. Any number of non-Muslim defenders of Islam will leap into any conversation where they perceive offence against one of the worlds ‘great’ religions … but only that one. You won’t hear many charges of antisemitism from the Left if you criticise Judaism either, funnily enough – yet another topic for another day.
And this is where the whole Cultural Racism narrative is at the moment. Whatever the possibility for a real academic subject being built around the term (on which the Wiki article points out there’s much disagreement), it’s main practical purpose has been to brand critics of Islam as racists.
Islam isn’t a race.
This seems to now be greeted as a sure sign of one’s racism. And no wonder, because, as the Wiki article points out, there is an intent to redefine race and racism. This has been a road they have driven themselves down over a few decades. From a practical scientific point of view, race offers no grand story, no great scientific truth, even though there are health reason for making distinctions.
Can agree we are all one species? The problem the racists of various ethnicities have is that they treat race like they would a sub-species. But, even if that were the case (if Neanderthals and others still existed) that wouldn’t make the racists right in their discrimination.
So, what are the determined critics of the west to do? After all, declare ‘race’ itself a cultural invention and it becomes a bit inconvenient for the narrative, where ‘racism’ is a great tool for demonising your enemies. Invent ‘Cultural Racism’ in order retain all the stigma of being a racist, while expanding the scope to pretty much anything that allows you to identify a distinction, which to me seems a suspect dogma designed to sustain ‘racism’ rather than to fight it.
Cultural Racism Newspeak
Just noticed this Cultural Racism definition comes from an Education textbook, "Teaching for Diversity & Social Justice."
Reminder: Ed Schools increasingly require diversity courses to earn a degree & become a teacher. But there's a lot here that's not just about diversity. 12/ pic.twitter.com/lSW8VZGu1G
Read Selina’s full thread on the redefinition of terms and the Newspeak it has ushered in.
The context in which I’ve presented the problem is narrower, which you might expect, given my Secular Humanist Atheist opposition to oppressive religions, and the difference between religion in the US and the UK, and the different context in which racism has played out given our colonial history, and the greater extent to which slavery affected people in the US, and victims and perpetrators.
Selina’s thread starts out with this Aero Magazine article that addresses some of the problems with the book upon which the thread is based.
In modern democracies like Australia (from whence both Manne and I hail), the US and the UK, we have by and large outgrown the notion that women don’t deserve to be treated as full moral equals to men.
Except, in our British context where Islam is a problem (unprosecuted FGM, until a recent first case; years of hiding Muslim grooming gangs rather than dealing with them; pseudo-feminist support for the hijab as a choice, but not a word on the women suffering in Iran) it is no longer the case that we have outgrown such misogyny. We’re growing right back into it, thank you very much. And homophobia too, where parents in predominantly Muslim schools have protested, successfully, the teaching of the program ‘No Outsiders’ (re-emboldening homophobes of other religions in the process).
Flipping to this homophobia for a moment, the ‘No Outsiders’ program does what it says – it teaches children to avoid the unintentional, or intentional, persecution of others for, among other things, their sexual orientation, so avoiding making people feel like outsiders.
I know from my school days, even with no malicious intent, we made it uncomfortable, to say the least, for any emerging gay child or teen to come out. Of course there were no same-sex parent couples that we knew of back then, so now, ‘No Outsiders’ even teaches acceptance of same-sex or variable gender parents of any children too.
However, despite the fact that you might expect Muslims to understand the problem with being considered outsiders, you’d be mistaken, since Islam has its own special way of seeing pretty much anyone that doesn’t conform to Islamic standards as an outsider.
Islam is a particularly divisive religion that also creates no compelling desire to avoid playing the victim – as has been the case in other instances. It is not unusual that following an Islamic terror attack, UK Muslim organisations spend more time lamenting the anticipated explosion in anti-Muslim hate than they do the killing of innocents in Islam’s name – except to the extent to which it blackens the good name of Islam. This is very specifically why criticism of Islam, or even mentioning the horrendous attacks done in the name of Islam, is declared ‘Islamophobic’. The act of terrorism is of course “Nothing to do with Islam” (and echoed by Western world leaders like marionettes of the Islamists) … except that the perpetrators will cite chapter and verse of why it is precisely something to do with Islam.
Is this duplicity on the part of supposed liberals in the West not its own Cultural Racism? (And here I’m not condoning the ridiculous identitarians that base their complaints of apparent ‘genocide’ of their ethnicity – I’m far more concerned about the damage done to liberal inspired freedoms when the pseudo-liberals play ball with Islamists)
There are many more examples of the distinction between actual and perceived misogyny in the West, … and figures are given from a Pew poll that show the stark difference between the West and some Islamic countries.
Of course such misogyny is all to do with ‘Toxic Masculinity’. While many object to the term in a Western context, I actually agree such a thing exists. Except I blame religion. Religions are generally patriarchal systems, and the big religions were created in a time of ‘Toxic Masculinity’ and they perpetuate it into the present. No surprise then that some ultra conservative US Christian sects and Islamic sects that buy into the religious Toxic Masculinity. Strangely, some feminists seem totally blind to this when it comes to Islam – yes, Islam again. Not Christianity, where the patriarchal nature of the church is easy to admit. When discussing the all too frequent incidences of terrorism at the hands of Islamic terrorist one might be told it’s “Nothing to do with Islam” and all to do with “Toxic Masculinity”. OK, then let’s play that game:
(actually, despite my agreement with Sophie, it turns out all terrorists are not in fact men … but they mostly are, so it hardly diminishes the point)
It doesn’t take much rooting around in Islamic and ex-Muslim circles to find plenty of misogyny. Many Muslim women will not only defend the hijab as their free choice, but will even deny Islam’s misogyny, and then tell you why they are not as reliable as men.
The Left’s Cultural Racism – Against Ex-Muslims
What you won’t find among non-Muslim apologists for Islam is much acknowledgment of ex-Muslims. In some cases, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali you come across outright venomous opinion. But, who else would know Islam, and be prepared to be honest about it, than ex-Muslims that were themselves devoted to it at one time, of subject to its oppression, or both.
Is this ‘Cultural Racism’? OK, perhaps some old white guys are racist haters of Muslims. But, come on, can you honestly deny the voices of ex-Muslims? Or the women of Iran that plead for support from Western feminists?
Apparently you can. The Women’s March, or any tragedy that befalls Muslims, such as the horrific attack at Christchurch, will be met with Western feminists donning the hijab. Not the men, note, just the women. It strikes me as a particularly ignorant or wilful betrayal of women around the world that have suffered under Islam’s toxic masculinity.
Conclusion
For the most part, in the wider world, outside the most rational of academia that might make sense of it, ‘Cultural Racism’ is an entirely bogus meme, used by apologists for Islam, and those intent on demonising Western ideas.
I’ll tell you why it’s not racism. Those that are on the receiving end of the charge support many people of the same ethnicities as those that are supposed to be victims of our racism. The secular Muslims, the ex-Muslims that become secular humanists that support western style democracy over theocracy are some of the most rational critics of Islamic theocracy, knowing it as they do. And the members of the Left that criticise critics of Islam but not critics co Christianity … ex-Muslims have your measure.
Poor Tommy and Owen are from not too dissimilar backgrounds – at least that’s what Owen says. Tommy’s mother worked in a bakery, and apparently left Tommy with no particular political education or affiliation. Owen’s parents were a shop steward and a lecturer, so basically aspiring middle class with plenty of political awareness. Dead similar.
Tommy went to a local school in Luton, while Owen attended a sixth form college, equal opportunities being what they are. So, let’s hear no more about Owen’s privileged background.
But their paths changed after leaving high school.
Owen received a top education in one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Tommy left school and had various jobs.
Nevertheless, they retain an uncannily similar campaigning style. [Credit to someone else for spotting the similarity – but I’m blocked by Owen and can’t find them now]
Every single day, the British media, and the media elsewhere, whips up racism and bigotry against Muslims, against migrants, against refugees, and against other minorities, those people being a particular favourite target right now. Now there are some consequences. It fuels, it drives, it legitimises street level abuse, harassment, bullying, in the playground, the workplace. It fuels overtly racist attacks. It drives violence, and it drives the rise of the far right. After Christchurch, the massacre of dozens of Muslims, there can be no more tolerance, and no more silence within the media industry, about the role of the media, effectively acting like hate preachers, with megaphones that reach tens of millions of people, every single day. Now there are some that get very angry in the media when it’s called out, how dare you call out the media, as though they’re being victimised and attacked and insulted, rather than using their platform to speak out and challenge the racism and the bigotry which has consequences for people. Now the media is an industry which is overwhelmingly dominated by those from those from those privileged backgrounds who do not suffer the consequences of the bigotry and racism that the media fans. But it has to now be called out. And, to fail to use one’s platform, if you have a platform, to speak out against racism and bigotry by the most powerful institutions, or some of them, in the country, is to be complicit. So, enough of people responding in this defensive way, or being silent, or themselves peddling racism and bigotry. Call it out.
And the following wouldn’t be out of place in a video from Tommy …
Every single day, the British media, and the media elsewhere, whips up hatred and bigotry against those that criticise Islam, those people being a particular favourite target right now. Now there are some consequences. It fuels, it drives, it legitimises street level abuse, harassment, bullying, in the playground, the workplace, of Islamic supremacism. It fuels overtly Islamic attacks. It excuses Islamic violence, and it drives the rise of the far right Islam. After Manchester, the massacre of dozens of victims, or Rotherham and the 1400+ child victims, there can be no more tolerance, and no more silence within the media industry, about the role of the media, acting like cowards, more afraid of being called racist hate preachers themselves, with megaphones that could expose the Islamism to millions of people, every single day. Now there are some that get very angry in the media when it’s called out, how dare you call out the media, as though they’re being victimised and attacked and insulted, rather than using their platform to speak out and challenge the grooming gangs and the consequences for children. Now the media is an industry which is overwhelmingly dominated by those from those from those privileged backgrounds, like Owen Jones, who do not suffer the consequences of the Islamic terrorism and grooming gangs, that the media fans, by screaming ‘Islamophobia’. But it has to now be called out. And, to fail to use one’s platform, if you have a platform, to speak out against grooming gangs, which Andrew Norfolk eventually did. The most powerful institutions, or some of them, like the police, politicians, and media, that say “Nothing to do with Islam” is to be complicit. So, enough of people responding in this defensive way, or being silent, or themselves peddling excuses for Islamic homophobic bigotry. Call it out.
The thing is, there WAS silence in the media, on Muslim grooming gangs, from Owen, and especially from Corbyn, who sacked (sorry, managed to ‘persuade’) Sarah Champion from the opposition front bench for daring to talk about Pakistani Muslim Grooming Gangs. There has been collusion in the silence from press, police and politicians, specifically many Labour councils.
For over a decade any attempt to raise the issue found the media hunting down those that complained and labelling them as racists – teachers that saw the grooming happening outside the school gates were demonised and hounded out of office if they expressed any concern in too explicit terms.
Maggie Oliver, of the eventually infamous case of Three Girls in Rochdale, which came only after she had been thwarted in her attempts to investigate the problem in Manchester, has been campaigning for more awareness, and for investigations into the neglectful and complicit senior police and social services that shut down anyone trying to expose the problem.
Even Times writer, Andrew Norfolk, admitted he sat on a story of grooming gangs for a couple of years, for fear of being called racist. A self-censoring press! You’d actually think Norfolk would have been sacked for NOT getting the story out sooner. Instead he was honoured as the brave soul that eventually did publish. Let that sink in. The problem is so bad, you’re more of a hero for publishing what should be a straight forward crime story, than a demon for covering it up for a couple of years while who knows how many girls continued to be abused by those eventually prosecuted.
And don’t get me started on the mind boggling utter nonsense of Islamic terrorism being “Nothing to do with Islam”, which we have heard countless times from politicians, when Islamic terrorists tell you explicitly they are doing it FOR Islam, and cite Quran and Hadith in detail as justification.
Hot head Tommy has his issues. He says things that are too close to the edge of anti-Muslim bigotry, but if confronted he’ll generally walk it back. On many occasions he’s been very explicit about how he has no problem with most Muslims – he even talks of a local Muslim who he finds to a better example of a decent person than anyone else he knows. His issue is always with Islamism, Islamic extremism, Muslim grooming gangs, and the attacks on free speech that are targeted at speech against Islam specifically. You may not like the way he goes about things – fine. You may reject him for his criminal record – fine – except let’s not see double standards where other ex-cons are deemed to have been redeemed. But if you dismiss what he has to say in totality for who he is, rather than listening to what he has to say first, then, guess what, you’re a bigot.
Owen has no excuses, other than he’s been indoctrinated into a political class that searches for victims that they can make their next project … until the victims no longer want to be saved. You won’t see much concern for the working class if they happen not to like one particular religion.
Why has there been a Labour failure to make any criticism of Islam in practice? Where have Corbyn and Owen been on LBGT issues while the Parkfield Islamic homophobia has been going on?
If you want to see the utter hypocrisy of Owen, look no further than this race baiting tweet of his (don’t forget, Islamophobia=racism). [H/T Damo – @Concretemilk for these images]
There is absolutely no chance a newspaper would splash a childhood photo of an Islamic terrorist who murdered 49 Christians in a church as an “angelic boy”. Displacing focus from the victims to oh how could a sweet WHITE boy become a terrorist.
Funnily enough, the Mail and the Sun, had already displayed such a sentiment, using the term “angelic schoolboy”. This is what you get when you’re so biased in your political ideology you refuse to read anything that opposes your views. This is how dogmatic bigoted ideologues like Owen survive.
Let’s go back a bit further to look at what Owen had to tweet about Jihadi John:
Now there’s a surprise. The guy who complained about someone using Jihadi John as “a pop at Corbyn”, then four years later he’s using a newspaper front page to have a pop at what he perceives ‘Islamophobia’ in the press.
When he’s not throwing a tantrum and stomping off interviews that aren’t going his way, despite his persistent rude and entitled interruptions when it’s time for another guest to speak, and when he’s not spending his day blocking people on Twitter, he’s writing bigoted two faced pieces in The Guardian (“my newspaper”) that exhibit his own bigotry towards the ‘working class’ – no wonder Labour struggles for their support when they have mouth pieces like Owen.
This is where you get to with Grievance Politics that has infested Labour. Not that grievances shouldn’t be exposed, but that bigot Owen will be very selective about which he exposes, erring on the side of not exposing grievances by Islam, and conjuring up grievances even when there are none to be found.
For all Robinson’s antics, his ‘reporting’ actually has more credibility that Owen’s. That is deeply worrying, that an activist like Robinson that shouts about genuine grievances is an outcast that’s driven out of social media, while Owen Jones is, to a vocal yet gullible number on the left, is a heroic voice for the underdog. You won’t find much from Owen Jones on FGM (though he endorses “my newspaper’s campaign” – hardly a campaign, but rather too few articles); and when he writes about homophobia he won’t comment how much more of it there is in Muslim communities – because, of course, that would make him a racist … against a political religious far right homophobic ideology.
The nation state is still the only large scale functional unit of social cohesion that can provide citizens with both rights and freedoms in a manageable manner.
The USA has struggled, mostly successfully, to balance what could have been small nation states as states within a larger federal state. The EU wants to go the same way, but, just as many in the US oppose federal government power, so in the EU some of the nation states (Brexit) object to the lack of accountability of the federalists and the loss of self determination of the individual states.
Globalism, of any kind, is currently worse. There is no functional world democratic government (UN?🤣) so all the global power is in the hands of global corporations and powerful individuals and groups. While Soros may not be the monster he’s portrayed to be, I didn’t get the chance to vote him in as a mover and shaker of EU affairs. Meanwhile, we all know of Putin’s dabbling in the affairs of nation states. Or indeed of nation states interfering with other nation states, of which the US, UK and others have vast experience.
Then we have the dreamers … the anarchists, the socialists, that have some crazy idea that humans can form Goldilocks societies that just happen to work .. in their heads … but which take no account of the variety of human political opinions that are out there. The Utopians look mystified when you tell them you don’t want their particular Utopia. Well, I suppose they think “There’s only one true Utopia!” I’m sure I’ve heard that sentiment in another context.
Even the nation state has its troubles. Who in their right mind thinks Pakistan is a good functioning state? Yet they just had elections. And, good luck bringing socialism to Afghanistan … or secular freedom of belief to anywhere dominated by religion.
Let’s be realistic, and call western states ‘nearly’ functioning, ‘reasonably’ representative of the wishes of the people. Trump and Brexit have exposed the visceral hatred that the nice socialists are capable of towards their fellow citizens. Then there’s the ‘far right’ (the real, not the imagined). The right will grow in response to the craziness of the left. Extremes sustain each other.
Many on the left have shown their colours. Democracy, as long as they win. Secularism, as long as you don’t offend their pet religion.
It’s difficult enough to hold a nation state together. Europeans have been trying to do it in one form or another since Ancient Greece, slowly, often too slowly, extending the franchise to all citizens. Trial and error. Two steps forward one step back. It’s been hard and often bloody work. But nation state democracy is about the best these evolved apes with partially functional brains are capable of.
Thinking you can wreck it and start over, or that revolution *against* a democratic system is even a rational idea, pretty much sums up the capabilities of some human brains. Haven’t we tried ‘day zero’ scenarios a few times and watched the genocide unfold to know that’s probably the worst of all worlds. Isn’t revolution the last desperate attempt to get rid of an oppressive state?
There is no western government that cannot be voted out of office, no matter how bad you currently think they are. None. And while many in the west are looking at destroying democracy, other parts of the world are struggling to implement it.
But, the first sign of a democratic system going down the pan is a loss of free speech. If you can be locked up for speaking on any political matter, then your freedom is on the way out. The ECHR has just approved the protection of Europe’s pet religion. You can go to jail in European states for expressing an opinion … and I don’t mean incitement to violence dressed up as opinion. I mean opinion dressed up as incitement to violence. If you point out the capacity of Islam to be used to incite violence in terms that upset the violent among the Islamic religion, and they threaten or enact violence against you, you are in danger of becoming their victim, or, a victim of the state that is busy eroding your free speech. Madness.
The shock to many liberals has not been the bunch of actual far right loons, or the stupid alt right that think ethnic separation is even a possibility, or the oppressive nature of a conservative, actual far right, political judicial religious ideology. No, the shock has been the willingness of the supposedly secular left to go along with Islam’s far right political agenda while mouthing off about a much smaller fractured far right of perceived fascism. They can spot a good old Nazi, but can’t see an Islamofascist cheer leading them on.
Islam, anarchism, socialism, big business … these contain a variety of globalist agendas that will subvert individual freedom in order to gain ground. Sometimes they are temporary allies in localised regions. Each contains ideologues that think their way will inevitably win. If they could only stop pesky individuals getting in the way with their damned freedoms, they could set everyone free to live in their Utopia on their terms.
Currently, the only safeguard against these varied globalists is secular liberal democratic nation states, cooperating on security, law and policing, but also ensuring the individual freedoms of their citizens as a primary principle … especially freedom of speech.
So, when you hear that nationalists are racist xenophobes, you’ll realise that the target isn’t just the actual real live racist xenophobes. It’s the nation state and its capacity to thwart the various globalist agendas.
We can’t have versions of democracy where every single person gets a say on every single topic – someone always has to compromise. So, representative democracies of one sort or another are the way to go, as the least worse option. They could be improved, with some variety of proportional representation … but even then, someone always fails to get what they want – compromise is inevitable. There is no perfect democratic system.
And to work on local, regional, state, global scales, we need representational democratic systems that are seen to be democratic.
So, I don’t have a problem with federalism in principle, as one of those levels. That includes, in my local case, a federal EU. I’d even back a world federation, if its members were also democratic states (the UN fails in the respect).
The problem with the EU, and one of the reasons Brexit has come about, is that the EU federalisation project has not been democratic, and is still subject to the whims of dominant states like Germany, or rather to dominant parties within the dominant states. And, this made Brexit appeal in another respect: the 2016 UK EURef vote that came after 2014/5 unilateral action by Merkel to not only open the EU’s external borders with no vetting, but to go on to bully other EU states into complying and taking ‘refugees’ (i.e. economic migrants).
Even ex-Muslims and fanatic for ‘open doors’, Maryam Namazie doesn’t want to avoid proper vetting:
Open borders doesn't mean no vetting. EU has open borders within itself; is there no vetting. Absurd misinformation. https://t.co/LQgWIezoFV
And, just to clarify the related issues of ‘xenophobia’, ‘racism’, ‘Islamophobia’ that raise their ugly heads any time one objects when some SJW suggests un-vetted immigration is OK and “There are no illegals, they are all humans” …
Protecting a democracy with law and order and applying it to all citizens, avoiding an undocumented underground that’s rife with black markets and people trafficking seems a pretty rational perspective … and opposing those things seems insane.
The term ‘Islamophobia’ is an irrational fear of Islam – and the only true Islamophobes are those press, politicians and police that go out of their way to make excuses for Islam … which is, by the definition of its own texts, an ultra-conservative (i.e. far right) political judicial ideology dressed up as a religion, with strong misogynistic and homophobic tendencies written in, and a mechanism for threatening death for any Muslim that chooses to leave. It’s not compatible with secular liberal democracy, except in so far as many Muslims explicitly (Reformers) or implicitly (“Not MY Islam”) fail to follow the prescriptions in the supposedly ‘inerrant’ Quran. And, just to be clear, Christian lunacy has its own problems, not least in the USA.
Actual racism and xenophobia exists, and it doesn’t help the cause against them if everyone that dares talk about immigration is labelled a far right racist xenophobic Nazi from the outset.
Clear up those mostly left wing misrepresentations of reality and we might see some normality and rationality return to western politics.
And so, if we want effective global governance that supports genuine secular liberal freedom, we need a system that looks democratic, behaves democratically, and is respected enough to hold in check the excesses of rogue states … or even our own democracies that get it wrong so often. The UN has been referred to prior to a number of actions (Iraq War), but in the end, western states felt they had sufficient authority to go to war without the full backing of the UN.
And now Trump has shown his disdain for the UN, and a large number of Brits have done the same for the EU. Those organisations are not fit for purpose. Who the heck thinks the UN is up to scratch if Saudi Arabia is on the UN Human Rights Council? Who the heck thinks the European Court of Human Rights is up to scratch if it endorses jailing someone for disrespecting some cult’s fake war mongering child marrying prophet?
In an effort to be ‘nice’, and in order to protect a ‘minority’ (second larges and most violent religion in the world), the left has sold out secular liberal freedoms, and ordinary people can see that. Hence, Trump and Brexit.
Liberal democratic secular nation states are currently the only protection against chaos and corruption – as imperfect as they are, with their own corrupt elements. In fact, if we can’t get nation states right, what chance have we with larger organisations? Nation states will remain valuable until and if similar global systems can be set in place. Tearing them down in some ‘Year Zero’ fantasy will not help. Destroying them slowly by a thousand cuts of erosion to personal freedom and free speech will only make the demise apparent when its too late.
Update: Since I wrote this post, Saira has given up on Islam. More at the end.
When it dawns on the enlightened Saira Khan that the truth must come out, she really goes for it, and reveals some tragic long held secrets of abuse. She surprises herself at the behaviour of Pakistani men (not all, we must inevitably add), and rallies around our shared values for peace and freedom.
I’ve become an admirer of Saira, because it takes some doing for a Muslim women to speak the way she does on Loose Women (UK daytime TV show). I’m sure she’s been influenced and helped by being part of that show, and the result is that she is providing a significant contribution, for the benefit of young girls and women suffering abuse.
This important of voice of hers cannot be under-estimated.
I don’t agree with Saira on all points. It’s nothing to do with religion? Yes it is…
We start with Saira’s input on an episode on Islamic terrorism.
Let’s dig into this a little …
Whether you are white or you are Muslim …
There are no white Muslims? There are no non-white non-Muslims opposed to Islam?
ISLAM. IS. NOT. A. RACE.
Islam is a political judicial ideology, as well as a religion – it says so itself. Read the texts.
It’s not only legitimate to oppose Islam, as it is Communism, Fascism, Christianity, or any ideology, … more than that, for any liberal, it’s a duty: read the texts of Islam, especially the Quran, which is presented as the ‘inerrant’ word of Allah. What honest liberal would not oppose such an ideology?
Religions are let off the hook far too easily.
We have to feel what we can say without being deemed a racist.
Let that sink in. I ask you to do this, not to pick on Saira, but to point out that to declare criticism of Islam to be racism is a very common defensive stance we see regularly.
Every time there is an issue about Muslims, I’M brought out to talk about it.
Saira! You go on Loose Women and CHOOSE to talk about it. And, now that you are being more open about it, I’m very glad that you do.
I want Jane to come out, I want you to come out. Because we are united by our values, not by religion. If we live in this country we have to put our hands up and say we are British, and we are all aligned by the same things.
Who would Saira not want to talk about it? White working class men?
Nevertheless, it’s warming to hear Saira say this.
(But, note later, that she also effectively says she IS the sort of person that CAN talk about some issues, because she is ‘part of the community’. Mixed messages like this are common.)
Saira moves on to integration, and how Britain is a well integrated society, an yet so many Muslim children don’t feel integrated …
But we are not integrated. If you go to a school … and your best mate goes on six weeks school holiday and doesn’t come back and nobody asks you, why didn’t your friend come back, you’d feel angry. Who do you talk to? You can’t talk to your family, you can’t even talk to your school.
In 2012 I visited 75 primary schools, and I have to say, some of those schools would have been quite happy as if they were in Afghanistan. How can you have that in Britain? How can you have schools, with white teachers, and fully Muslim kids, and the parents are dictating the agenda?
These are strong words. So, don’t be surprised if Saira gets some flack for this.
And those teachers say to me, we don’t have the powers, we don’t have the resources. We are too scared to say something in case we are deemed racist.
And, that applies to authorities outside the ‘communities’ that Saira refers to, such as schools, social services, police, politicians, there has been this reluctance. And that’s because of the recent history of conflating Islam, culture and ethnicity to the point where it is all too easily labelled as a racist Islamophobe.
Jane asks about Jihadi John …
He came over here from Kuwait. As far as I know he went to a multicultural westernised school. He got our free education, free healthcare. We were nothing but kind to him and his family. Where did that hatred for Britain and all that we represent, come from?
Saira …
It comes from home. It comes from ordinary Muslim families that don’t speak up, who actually hear what’s being said, and don’t make a big deal about it. And that’s why I say today, it is not good enough for the majority of peaceful Muslims living in this country not to come out and speak up and say, not in our name. And these people are using Islam, and Muslims, and it’s branded all over the place. I’m a Muslim. Not in my name
A great sentiment, Saira. Thank you. I agree. It’s not in your name. But … it’s NOT nothing to do with Islam.
This is quite the opposite of what we have been told for years, not only by peaceful Muslims, but by Islamic apologist non-Muslims. Here’s why:
By adopting the narrative of “Nothing to do with Islam”, how can you then come out and say, “Not in our name?”
Islamic terrorism clearly does have something to do with Islam.
And it’s not in ‘your’ name that they do it, but in the name of Islam.
And, Islam isn’t just ‘your’ Islam – remember how diverse Islam is? So we are told.
This is where it becomes a bit tricky for a critic of Islam.
You can hardly use unifying calls to Islam, as many Muslims do, and then deny that unity. We hear about the Caliphate, the Ummah, Brothers and Sisters, ‘Nation of Islam’, ‘Muslim lands’ – there is no doubt that if one claims to follow Allah, Mohammed, and the Quran, and declare you are a Muslim (the shahadah), then you are a Muslim (except Ahmadis, apparently).
Despite that, Muslims around the world are endlessly declaring other Muslims to be non-Muslims, not proper Muslims, not Islamic enough, not authentic, …
If any particular Muslim thinks they are an authentic Muslim, then without some ‘Pope’ to determine otherwise, who are they to then to say which Muslims is not a Muslim?
But, Muslims denounce other Muslims regularly. And “Nothing to do with Islam” has been a huge confidence trick in this process: Assert that those specific Muslim perpetrators are non-Muslims – QED: nothing to do with Islam.
And what’s more, the fools on the left are all too eager to join in with this duplicity.
Saira …
I want to see a million people marching in this country, led by Muslims, led by moderate Muslims, to say, this is not in our name. Because I think indigenous people of this country, now, deserve people, somebody looking like me, saying, we are with you.
Wow! But she has a point.
However, here’s a contradictory point. You’ll note that indigenous peoples around the world are a common cause for supportive activism, among the left – with the exception of white people.
Of course, the term ‘indigenous’ doesn’t carry the same meaning in a genuinely mixed race multicultural society like ours, and quite rightly. We have many generations of British born people, of various ethnicities, and many children or other descendants of mixed raced relationships. A person with any skin colour could be as ‘indigenous’ as any particular white person. At least in part, my heritage on both sides is Irish from about three or four generations. There will be descendants of other ethnicities with a longer heritage than mine.
But, I hope you see the problem. When Saira thinks there’s a point in mentioning ‘indigenous peoples’ she might feel as though she’s referring to white people, as a majority, but already Saira has declared, and goes on to declare, the issue is about cultural values. It’s not about race – or at least it wouldn’t be, if only the left and much of the press weren’t so keen to make it about race. There’s a lot of race baiting going on, and far less actual racism.
Race baiting … such as that engaged in by Saira a few years ago, while screaming at Tommy Robinson on TV … for saying pretty much what Saira says in these programmes … for marching in the street … It doesn’t add up, does it.
Saira …
Just to let you know, when I say things, I get abused, I’m called a coconut*, .., I’m called a racist.
(*coconut: brown on the outside, white on the inside)
It’s tragic how many non-white racists are prepared to call other people racist, including other non-white people like Saira, if they step out of line and deviate from the approved narrative.
I’m attacked by white British liberals, as well as members of my own community. I don’t care.
Nuff said.
The discussion moves on to parental responsibility, and being aware of the radicalisation of children,
You can’t watch them all the time, but you do have a sense of who their friends are, what they are doing, and how they’re acting.
Fair point.
But I do have some concern for some Muslim mothers. Some of the more pious and misogynistic parts of the Muslim community actually give young sons greater authority over the female family members, both sisters and mothers.
In some places, like Saudi, there are widowed women who are under control of their young sons, their ‘guardians’, that prevent the women going out alone. They may even require the son’s permission to take up employment. This Islamic male domination reaches out to other Muslim communities too.
With regard to the Pakistani Muslim community, when Pakistani model Qandeel Baloch was killed by her brother, many British Muslim young men were on social media declaring they’d have done the same had their sister dishonoured the family.
This is how messy it is, and though I agree with Saira that parents should take more note, there are cultural and religious influences that prevent that happening.
Saira is also asked whether parents should ‘shop’ (expose, report to authorities) radicalised children.
I’ve shopped my own cousin who came to this country on a sponsorship form and disappeared within fifteen days. It was all pre-planned, I had not idea about it. Am I not going to shop him in just because he’s my cousin? No. I’m going to shop him in because he went against my British values of honesty, decency and respect.
Honest? Decency? Respect? Respect for the law? Well, yes, I agree.
This is worth noting, because there are so many people on the left that actually condone illegal immigration. It doesn’t matter that honest legal immigrants are prevented from coming here, or that illegal immigration cannot vet those arriving for their intentions.
Even ex-Muslim and fanatic for ‘open doors’, Maryam Namazie doesn’t want to avoid proper vetting:
Open borders doesn't mean no vetting. EU has open borders within itself; is there no vetting. Absurd misinformation. https://t.co/LQgWIezoFV
But, back to a final remark in the video above, from Saira ..
I say to people in my own community, if you don’t like it here, go and live somewhere else. I want you to own it. I want you to stop cowering behind “Oh, I’m too scared to be racist.” If you want to have a conversation, and you want to put people on the spot, then you own it and you say it, you are not a racist.
That’s quite a statement. Well done Saira.
Abuse in Pakistani Muslim Families
Bear with me on this aside, you’ll get the point. …
Some time ago, atheist Richard Dawkins collected and published on his site some of the many examples of abuse and death threats he receives through various channels, from lovely religious people that didn’t appreciate his atheism. He made light of it. The messages were hilariously stupid.
But Mayor of London, sad Sadiq Khan didn’t quite take the same tack. He made a racist meal of it, and wallowed in his Muslim victimhood as he read out the abuse he received. … Except …
One of the examples he read out was a mere question, from the daughter of Muslim father and non-Muslim white mother. It was from none other than Shazia Hobbes, author of The Gori’s Daughter.
This was the ‘hate speech’ that Sadiq Khan read out:
If you use a knife to mutilate your daughter’s vagina will the full force of the law be brought down on you? Asking for a Muslim. Thanks.
Given that at the time this was written there were thousands of recorded incidents of FGM, and zero prosecutions, it seems like a reasonable question, especially from a daughter of a Muslim. For more context, here’s Shazia’s letter in response.
This is the context of ‘hate speech’ and the fear of being called a racist, that Saira has been talking about above, with the other context of Islamic terrorism, when Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, can use a message from someone aware of the problem of FGM as part of his own race baiting agenda.
And so, it was with some surprise, and great admiration, that I heard Saira broaching this subject, again on Loose Women. …
Saira begins by telling this story …
In June 2002, Mukhtār Mā’ī was the survivor of a gang rape as a form of honour revenge, on the orders of a tribal council of the local Mastoi Baloch clan that was richer and more powerful than her Tatla clan. See here.
Saira …
She [Mukhtār Mā’ī ] then went on to set up a charity in Pakistan to help women like that. … She was put on a fashion show in Pakistan, which shows that progress is being made, slowly. The designer said that she wanted her to be a symbol of hope and for women’s rights.
Picking up Saira’s earlier point, “I’m attacked by white British liberals“, we find this sort of attack on one’s intentions happens so often if non-Muslims try to support Muslim women at all.
Yes, as a Humanist I oppose all religions, and yes, I find Islam to be particularly bad. But that doesn’t negate my support for women, even Muslim women, especially Muslim women, that are oppressed by cultural norms that are perpetuated by Islam.
Now, specific cultures may result in different specific brutal and misogynistic practices, but you will still find that much of the justification comes from the religious modesty and honour system. I’d like to see anyone justify these acts of abuse using the Humanist Manifesto. Old religious texts perpetuate old misogynistic values into the present.
And it’s here I’m guessing we’d still see Saira reacting negatively to comments on Islam, despite her earlier statement, “Because we are united by our values, not by religion.” Yes, we should be, and religion should not be let off the hook so easily.
But, to continue, at 2:10, we come to Saira’s brave revelation …
… at thirteen years old, sitting in my bedroom, a male member of my family – he’s died now – came in, and did things …
Please, listen to Saira’s story directly, in her own words. She struggles to hold it together, but does manage to do so.
I’ll pick up points salient to the wider message. …
It is wrong. It is not culturally acceptable. It is not religiously acceptable.
Correct. It is not acceptable. But note that Saira points out that it is unacceptable both culturally, and religiously.
For those that want to protect the religion and say, “It’s not the religion, it’s the culture,” well, it is both, and is unacceptable as both.
The culture in Pakistan is a mixture of older traditional culture and religion. The religion and the culture ARE used to justify these behaviours, because in both, women are second class citizens.
How on earth can a religion be excused, when it endorses: taking a woman’s testimony to be worth half that of a man; beating of wives; … Of course such a religion will perpetuate the misogyny and ‘toxic masculinity’ that was present when it arose – in Islam’s case, 1400 year old misogyny.
Culturally we can’t talk about it [abuse], because we [women] are seen as the ones that inspired it, there’s no help.
Quite. And this aspect of the culture is right there in the religious texts, and encouraged by the modesty rules that see women as the provokers of men’s uncontrollable lust.
It is not JUST the culture. Because this attitude remains prevalent across many cultures that are intertwined with Islam. And with other religions (e.g. conservative Christianity in the USA).
On the Fusion of Culture AND Religion
Let’s hear more from Saira, on another Loose Women episode, about a visit to Pakistan, because that will reveal more about the cultural, AND the religious acceptance of the abuse of women.
I was sent to Pakistan by the BBC to do a documentary … There was one day where the prophet Mohammed’s birthday was to be celebrated. I had an all-male British team with me. We went to this square, and there were just thousands of men, and there wasn’t a woman in sight. And my director was quite nervous, and I said, look, we need to get into the heart of this, we need to find out what the atmosphere’s like.
And my Pakistani fixer was, like, there’s no way you can do that. And I just looked at him, why not, I want to do it. A was wearing traditional chemise, I had my head covered, because it was a spiritual day, they were celebrating the prophet’s birthday, and I thought, what’s going to happen to me. And I didn’t want to believe ….
“And I didn’t want to believe ….” – and that, I’m afraid, is what drives a lot of opposition to the criticism of Islam. It’s what drives many interactions with Muslims.
They will close their eyes and flat out tell you it’s night, when they’d see it’s clearly day, if only they’d open their eyes and look.
“I’m attacked by white British liberals” – Well, yes. because they too don’t want to believe there’s a problem with Islam.
… with everything my parents told me about men from those cultures, I thought, no, it’s not true, I’m going to prove to them them that it’s not true..
Denialism is a powerful psychological force, and it controls many a religious mind. Saira eventually had the courage to face the reality of the moment.
They’re going to respect me as a woman. … I went down, into the crowd, and only on the sidelines, and within moments I’d been bustled into the middle of a group of men … it was horrific
… my boobs were touched, my bottom was touched, my legs were touched .. I was just shaking “Get me out, get me out, get me out.”
… My fixer came in, and grabbed me.
… I dread to think what would have happened. I believe I would have been raped.
… I was so angry. … No one would have helped me [had the British camera crew not been there]
That’s an astonishingly brutal awakening. Bear in mind that Saira isn’t some wet lefty that has a couple of Muslim acquaintances that wear the hijab and claims, “But my Muslim friends are lovely,” as if to explain why these stories couldn’t possibly be true.
Saira is, as she says, part of the Pakistani Muslim community (or one of the variety of those). And her parents warned her. And she knows of the honour culture, the treatment of women …
Denialism is a powerful psychological force, sustained only by cognitive dissonance. You WANT to believe, and when faced with stories, the stories must be racist lies … or so the conversations often go.
There’s more …
We have to accept, that when we are bringing in migrants, asylum seekers, people from different cultures, they have a very different upbringings. Their societies, their political systems, …
Islam is the bedrock of the social and political features of these cultures, and often contributes to the judicial system too, and the misogyny in Islam informs it, as does the behaviour of many of the men. Young boys are taught to both respect women, but also devalue them, to the point where if a woman is a victim, it must be her fault for bringing it upon herself, for shaming her family, … for shaming Islam.
… what they think is normal in their country is not normal in our country …
Sadly, many of those ‘liberals’ that attack you, Saira, are post-modern relativists, who ask “Who we are to judge their culture, their religion” – racism of low expectations. And many Muslims pick up on this and ask, who are YOU to tell me about MY religion.
And, also sadly, many think that imported behaviour should also be normal behaviour in this country, and some act as if it is, … and it may seem as if it is, in a closed community.
… and we have to do that to protect ourselves, and to also protect them …
You can see why racist Muslims talk of Saira in terms of ‘coconut’ … I’m surprised she hasn’t been called a white supremacist, for daring to suggest these behaviours aren’t up to our British value standards.
But, of course, Saira is dead right. Spot on.
Our standards of equality, across race, religion, gender, are significantly better than any that privileges one race, one religion, one gender over another other.
We may not succeed in achieving this equality (and no thanks in small part to religions that perpetuate the inequality – looking at you CofE, not just Islam), but in law, and mostly in practice, we are all equal.
It’s quite common to see these faults as the domain of the white racist misogynist male xenophobic bigot – aka Nazi – but that is engaging in precisely the false accusative rhetoric that Saira has been opposing in these programmes.
Religions get off far too lightly. Some of the highest privileges we have go to religion. The Church of England is the state church, and we have unelected bishops … and child abuse. The Roman Catholic Church is even further behind … and child abuse. And Islam is virtually untouchable, despite Islamic terrorism … and child abuse by grooming gangs now appearing in our newspapers regularly.
As Andrew Norfolk said, after publishing his Times report on grooming gangs, his political correctness and fear of being thought of, of thinking himself, as a racist, made him sit on the story, while who knows how much child abuse continued.
Ruth Langsford chips in …
We all have this fear of being labelled a racist, or you can’t talk about somebody’s religion … this is not a religious thing, this is a cultural thing …
What???
Have you ANY idea what that sounds like? Let me spell it out. It sounds like this:
You can’t talk about somebody’s religion, so let’s not talk about religion, even though I just did, because I don’t want to blame religion, so let’s blame their culture …
Let that sink in for a while. You’d rather throw rich and potentially adaptable cultures under the bus, rather than even contemplate that it’s related to the temporally closed and persistent impact of the religion has on those cultures?
And this, remember, is in a context where Saira is talking about sexual abuse occurring right in the middle of a festival dedicated to the celebration of prophet Mohammed’s birthday, where there was absolutely ZERO conflict in the minds of those that abused Saira?
The abuse by Muslim men, in the middle of a religious celebration, see no conflict with their religious devotion … and abusing a woman, right there and then? Nothing to do with Islam??? What???
Jane Moore has a stab at excusing religion … but then, after Saira’s, interruption goes on to say …
Explain to me, surely there is not a culture, your experiences aside, where a couple of these assaults we’re talking about do extend to rape, I mean, obviously, white men commit rape as well, but surely there is no culture in the world where it is acceptable to rape a woman who is a stranger to you.
Wow! The mind bending needs some unpacking.
They have just decided that it’s the culture, not the religion.
Now Jane wants to make sure there is no culture in which it is acceptable to rape a women who is a stranger to you.
The point here, regarding culture, AND religion, is that some cultures, or even sub-cultures, DO condone rape, of any women, because they see women as a lower value than men. AND, that perspective is all over the Islamic texts.
Jane is confusing two points that Saira has already managed to be pretty clear about, … but I’ll help out with the third one:
It’s not acceptable TO US that ANY culture should condone this.
But it IS accepted in some cultures
And it IS accepted in some religions.
And very clearly so, if THEY find it acceptable to molest Saira in the middle of a religious festival dedicated to the birthday of the prophet Mohammed. It really is accepted in the religion.
You can keep on playing around with words all you like, but it’s right there in front of you.
Saira responds …
You’re right , it is unacceptable, but rape, in many cultures, goes unreported, because men can get away with it, because it’s not seen as a serious crime.
Jane, how is that not clear enough to you. SOME cultures DO see rape as acceptable behaviour by men towards women?
So, again, I have to disagree with Saira, and the panel. It very clearly IS acceptable in the Islamic texts. As is slavery, as is sex slavery. The Quran has passages that excuse various behaviours, regarding one’s wives, and ‘those that your right hand possesses’, which is usually referring to slaves, and female slaves. Mohammed married one of his female slaves, to which the excuse it usually, “Oh, she became a Muslim first.” Was that an ‘Offer you can’t refuse‘, from the Islamic godfather.
Saira …
I was taught that as a woman, if I ever got raped, or if anything happened to me, it was going to be my fault. What were you doing in that situation? Why were you on your own? What were you wearing. I was brought up with that mentality.
And the Quran has plenty to say about modesty and women covering themselves, and about the intellectual deficiency of women.
Blame culture?
No. Cultures adapt. Cultures don’t both persist ancient codes of conduct, and resist modern improvements, without some strong underlying encoded system that traverses generations, even skips generations and re-emerges. Religion fits he bill.
We have seen 1970s westernised Afghanistan, and Iran, with women in the mini skirts that were fashionable at the time. Cultures adapt to the times. In both cases it was the oppressive religion that re-asserted itself so that women became oppressed again.
Blame religion? A BIG YES. It’s no coincidence that the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ayatollah in Iran swept away the modern cultural adaptation to more liberal values, and dragged both those countries back 1400 years.
Come on, Saira, you can’t keep excusing the religion.
Jane again …
Is the issue here then, mass uncontrolled immigration, where everyone arrives at once and there’s no expectation of integration? Because surely, you growing up in Britain, you must know lots of law abiding men from your culture who would never behave like that.
Saira …
Yeah, we’re not talking about Britain, because they’ve been brought up in Britain, with Western values, with British values, who know that you cannot do that, that women have equal rights, … [End of clip]
Notice here that Pakistani heritage men, who have been brought up in a British culture, … so, well, not them, obviously. Except, British Pakistani heritage men, and British white men, and others, get religion, get Islam, become more religious … before going off to join ISIS? NOT ALL, of course … but those radicalised by ISIS messages are not receiving instruction in Christianity or Hinduism.
And yet we are often told how most sexual abuse in Britain is committed by white men. Terrorism is a far right problem.
There are some confused messages that emerge when you’re focus is to explain something and yet not blame a religion. You are bound to tangle yourself in knots.
I’m sure there are many decent people in Pakistan and in other cultures that know that the cultures they’re in, on the whole, don’t treat women well … and, yes, Britain has been more like that too in the past.
As I said, cultures can adapt. Britain’s culture has, and continues to do so.
But hold on there Saira, some of those British Pakistani men do do it in Britain. That was the point of your brave exposition on your misfortune.
Let’s look at this next clip to clear this up …
Christine Lampard …
They’ve also told us of a noticeable rise in calls [about abuse] from Asian women
Another aside …
You have to be careful when the media use the term ‘Asian’ regarding abuse and grooming gangs. It is used so often to mask a more specific identification, such as in the case of Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, or grooming gangs generally. This is a really weird and dishonest narrative.
First, after years of insisting that if anyone starts a critical view with the word “Muslims, …” they are immediately tarred as racist Islamophobes by the left, because, well, “Not all Muslims”…
But, when the left are talking about Pakistani Muslims, they prefer to use ‘Asians’. Surely “Not all Asians” should apply here. Are they Asianphobic racists?
Well, I’d certainly say using ‘Asian’ is more racist than being specific. If “Muslims …” unfairly implicates all Muslims, then surely “Asians …” implicates all Asians, and is racist towards even more people.
I think these confused people are struggling for an angle: if you implicate an ever wider range of people, then you are not being a specific racist. Maybe that’s better, I don’t know entirely how this PC mind-set works, but it seems to be something like that.
In truth, this is a total fraud, because this never happens to other ‘Asians’ – Chinese, or Koreans – they would be identified by their original ethnicity.
We know this is only used to protect Islam, and to avoid criticising Muslims.
You will spot this ploy most when referring to grooming gangs, because though most are Pakistani Muslim, some are Muslims from other cultures, including African.
Back to Christine’s main point …
They’ve also told us of a noticeable rise in calls from Asian women who suffered abuse in childhood, and the main perpetrator is usually someone from their own family …
I remind you again of Shazia Hobbes’ story.
It just sounds shocking, but this is not even surprising to you, Saira, from the stories you’ve heard.
Saira …
We had the fight for the girls in Rochdale, and I think we now need to put a real fight up for the girls that can’t be seen or heard, because they don’t have representation in society.
That’s another devastating statement. Let that one sink in too. Nobody in their community will represent them? Are social services able to operate in these communities? What are the police doing?
I’m afraid that what we’ve learned from Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford, Oxford and other places, is that if the police won’t act for child victims from outside the community, they sure as hell won’t act for children inside those communities – and one suspects, given some of Saira’s comments above about schools she visited, they wouldn’t find much cooperation from within those communities if they tried.
Look, I can talk about it because I come from culture, I come from a community, and I’m talking about the Pakistani community.
Bear in mind that Pakistan is substantially occupied by Muslims, and that most British Pakistanis are Muslims. Pakistan was, after all, created as a nation for Muslims. It is a Muslim nation. What does that tell you about the ‘community’? It’s not merely a Pakistani community. It’s a Pakistani Muslim community. Currently, I know of no Pakistani Humanists that would or could use Humanists texts to excuse their abuse of women.
Well, as I said, the problem is that some of these closed communities will not allow outsiders, non-Muslims, to investigate. This is the non-integrative isolated community that reeks of bad Multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism will fail, if we are not more discriminating about which cultural/religious practices we will tolerate – some, as Saira has said, are not acceptable. And though we mouth off about FGM … there have been no successful prosecutions. It’s very un-PC to investigate the inner women’s business in such a community, and your average non-Muslim PC plod isn’t up to it, and I doubt many Muslim PC plods would dare expose problems in their communities.
Note that my objection to Islam does not mean banning or not tolerating Islam. Part of our ‘British values’ that Saira subscribes to is freedom of belief. You can believe what you want.
But if you turn your beliefs to actions, and those actions contravene basic human decency, and/or the law, then those beliefs need dealing with and must not be left to fester, the way the Muslim grooming gang problem has, and, according to this episode of Loose Women, the way abuse has within those communities.
I have to say that this isn’t based on religion, this is culture, and the culture I was brought up in is, keep your mouth shut, and make sure you do not bring dishonour on our family, you must not bring shame.
Except it is religion. Various religions. Bringing shame through the behaviour of children, especially girls, is pretty standard across many religions, including Christian conservatism of the USA, and has been in Roman Catholicism, such that it resulted in the Magdalene laundries of Ireland.
So, again, we have Saira desperately trying to avoid blaming Islam. Why is that?
Because that would bring down even more wrath upon her head, if she dared blame the religion of Islam. It’s that simple.
Saira’s perspective might be induced by her own indoctrination, so that she really believes that what is blindingly obvious, is not so.
Or, …
It might be self preservation. Because to blame Islam would be blasphemous. A very dangerous game, in Islam.
… you must not bring shame. And what that means, as a young girl, .. or a young boy, growing up, you’re too scared to talk. If terrible things happen to you, you are too scared to talk.
There is no representation, because it’s such a tight knit community. There are other things that go on in the culture that basically mean you’re isolated.
I have sat amongst a group of people, and I have heard stories of a young girls being raped in the family, of a young girl being abused, or a young boy being abused.
And I’m sat there thinking, why doesn’t anybody do something, please.
Again, let these devastating statements sink in.
And when asked, why don’t the victims speak out, …
Because, there is no one to talk to. Most of the elected community members are men …
Religious men. Muslim men. Do they elect atheists, or Christians? Are Pakistani Christians allowed to exist in the ‘community’?
No, I’m sorry, Saira, but your fantasy has to be shattered. These leaders are religious men. Good Muslims.
.. and they know that you can’t just go and snitch on your family …
Bear in mind how Saira had no trouble with HER British values, with regard to snitching on her cousin’s ‘bunking off’. But this is child abuse we’re talking about. Or not talking about, depending on your ‘culture’. So, you’d think that a British Pakistani community that isn’t suffering the misogynistic throwbacks of Pakistan would be more forthcoming in solving this problem. Apparently not. More like Pakistan than is good for us … or rather than is good for the children.
When asked whether a young girl could speak to her mother …
You are so brainwashed into what shame means and what dishonour means.
In these communities, rape in a marriage is not recognised …
Again, I refer you to Shazia Hobbes who has been resoundingly castigated, as an Islamophobe, for saying these very same things. Do read her book.
Culturally, you can marry somebody that’s thirteen years old. You can do it back in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, you can do it in India.
Except, of course, it is endorsed by the example of the prophet Mohammed, and his marriage to his six year old wife, and in some places they take that specific age even more seriously. And, even if the state doesn’t allow it, oddly enough the religious do it.
See here: Marriageable Age. Note that most state determined ages are 15 – 21, but some allow younger than the self-consent age, with parental/judicial approval. Given that many marriages are forced anyway, parental approval will often apply. It’s self-determination that suffers.
Note also, from that linked page, the table lower down on religion, and the various sects of Islam. Hanafi and Jafari Islam: age 9 for girls. These are the sects of Islam of Pakistan and Iran, where child marriages occur.
Still nothing to do with Islam, Saira?
When that’s acceptable, you think that’s normal.
They are taboo subjects anyway, but in this culture they are even more taboo.
Once you bring shame to your family, that’s it.
The consequences are, you could be killed, you could be ostracised.
Killed??? In the UK, you might be killed, for honour. We know of several cases that have made the news.
I wonder how the rest of the Loose Women panel are taking this. They are the ‘liberals’ that would shoot down as a racist any non-Muslim that said the things Saira has said (despite Saira’s insistence they should not be called racist) .
But, this is general knowledge.
NOT ALL MUSLIMS – Yes, we know. But enough. Too many.
Literally, the whole family splits up. When I came on here to talk about me, it was a family member. It took me years to come out and say it. I think I just did it spontaneously on Loose Women. The repercussions on my family have been horrendous. They didn’t believe me. They had a go at my mum. …
But wait … this is important …
It went all the way back to Pakistan and the family there.
This is what a lot of liberal lefties don’t get.
They see our lovely British Muslims like Saira, or their hijabi friend at school, and they are totally clueless about the extent to which these ‘unacceptable’ cultural practices are so easily imported to the UK, whether it’s this topic now, of abuse, or the earlier one, of Islamic terrorism. They have no idea what their nice Muslim friends are NOT telling them.
The left just don’t get it. Labour just don’t get it. Jermey Corbyn just doesn’t get it. That’s why he’d rather nudge Sarah Champion, MP, off the front bench, for daring to say, “Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs“, … and then leave the gangs to continue grooming.
The Conservative government hasn’t been much better. But, just this week, we had …
About time!! I called for research in 2012 when I gave evidence to Home Affairs Select Committee but people have been slow to take up the offer https://t.co/YO17ETj6aZ
They did a study at Hull university, and the research in 2015 found out that “Official police data suggest that incidences of sexual violence among South Asian women are low, however, this new research suggests it is happening, but not reported.
As you would expect from a close knit community.
I want to say that, if there is anybody, in the South Asian community, or any community for that matter, please note that there are help lines, and you can talk in confidence. Even if you don’t want to take it any further, or get something off your chest, please do so. I’ll tell you something, that happened to me at thirteen, and that affected the rest of my life.
Now, here comes Jane Moore, working her way up to the patently obvious, …
They are saying that the increase [in reporting] from the Asian community has increased since the broadcast of the Three Girls**, because that was largely, but not all Asian men.
(** Rochdale’s infamous an dramatised case of the prosecution of a Muslim grooming gang abusing young white girls)
I think what Jane should have said was, they were largely but not all Pakistani Muslim men, because some were Muslim men from other Muslim backgrounds. I’m not aware any were non-Muslim. To be specific:
Nine men were convicted, of whom eight were of British Pakistani origin and one was an Afghan asylum-seeker. – from Rochdale child sex abuse ring.
They were all Muslim.
And here comes the obvious …
The majority of perpetrators of organised abuse are white. And the second largest group are Asian. Now that may be because a lot of it goes unreported. We should also point out that it happens in white families.
The conflation of issues here is astounding.
It’s not white v Asian that’s significant. The significant figures are Pakistani Muslim v everyone else.
Of the ‘family’ child abuse, those numbers differ so much you’d expect an absolute figure to be greatest among the numerically largest group you’re identifying, whether that’s white, non-white (including black, for example), specifically Asian (including Sikhs and Hindus, for example), even more specifically Pakistani Muslim, or Muslim. This matters.
Muslims are only a small percentage of the UK population, and Pakistani Muslims even smaller.
Again, you’d expect a largest absolute figure in other groups.
You’d expect a similar rate (%) among all groups, except, with lower reporting in Pakistani Muslim communities, the numbers should be expected to be lower.
Jane is also conflating in-family abuse, with the grooming gang abuse.
Of this particular type of grooming, it is public, under the noses of the community, local police and social workers
A think tank has claimed that 84 per cent of people convicted of child grooming-gang offences since 2005 were Asian.
Type 1 offenders work in groups such as grooming gangs to target victims based on vulnerability, while Type 2 offenders form paedophile rings to carry out abuse because of a specific sexual interest in children.
However you massage the figure, Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs far outway any other categorisation of perpetrators, as a proportion of the population. This is what police, politicians, press and gullible celebs really don’t want to talk about.
Jane …
The whole thing that props this up is the conspiracy of silence …
And you, Jane, and you Saira, continue to be silent on the religion. But, on the specific problem of abuse, no matter what the cause, I’ll leave the final word with Saira …
The only thing that I would say, is that whereas those girls [Three Girls case] did go to the sexual health worker to get condoms, and the social worker was involved, there was a pattern, so it could be traced. In an Asian household, these girls aren’t seen.
They can never be detected, unless somebody from the community or a member of the family puts their hands up bravely and says we’ve got a problem here.
Best of luck with that.
A Problem for Islam
Muslims generally don’t want Islam to be criticised at all – I mean really don’t want it to be criticised. This is all to do with the depth of conviction they are indoctrinated into.
Many will even throw other aspects of their own identity and the identities of others under the bus, in order to save face for Islam, to save the honour of Islam. Characters like Miqaad Versi, of the Muslim Council of Britain, seem to devote much effort to writing to editors of newspapers to point out how racist and Islamophobic they are for any headline or piece that tarnishes the name of Islam.
The BBC have been so cajoled into submission that all ‘Asians’ are now smeared, by a refusal to make a more specific identification of the culprits in some case or other. They refuse to identify culprits as Pakistani Muslim, when in so many cases they clearly are, and instead identify them as Asian, as if spreading the blame around a bit is somehow less racist.
We’ve seen this instinctive protection of Islam many times following Islamic terror attacks. This is how it often goes:
Islamic terrorist commits some heinous act, and declares it to be in the name of Islam.
The press report it as an Islamic terror attack (if ever more reluctant to do so).
Islamic organisations cry out, “Nothing to do with Islam! … Islamophobia!” Because the good name of Islam is the most important thing in such a situate.
Eventually the same organisations get around to expressing sorrow for the loss of life … but they don’t really see why they should need to, since it’s nothing to do with Islam or the many peaceful Muslims who wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.
Watch how quickly these organisations take the opportunity to point out the white far right when a far more rare non-Islamic terror attack occurs.
Basically, Muslims have talked themselves into a corner, in order to defend Islam.
They could have been straight from the beginning:
Yes, there are some uncomfortable aspects of the religion which are too easy to take literally.
Yes, the Quran is inerrant and that makes it difficult to move on and away from the value systems that were prevalent at the time the religion emerged.
Yes, we need a reformed Islam … WHAO! NO!!!!
Of course, this is basically what the Ahmadi Muslims did. They invented another prophet. They even went to the trouble of getting round the thorny issue of Mohammed being the supposed last prophet, by declaring Mohammed was indeed the last prophet of revelation. Their later prophet came along to help interpret Islam so that it was truly a religion of peace.
And look how they are persecuted for it. In Pakistan they are unable to call themselves Muslims. Their mosques are attacked.
The problem with all Islam, even the Ahmadi version, is that it’s a massive fudge.
And as much as I admire Saira Khan’s efforts to deal with some of these problems, I can see the conflicted position she is in.
Islam has influenced cultures for so long that those cultures are Islamic ones – the people of those cultures say so themselves … ‘Muslim lands’. Pakistan was created as an Islamic nation. And yet, there are other aspects of those varied ‘Islamic’ cultures that remain unique and visible. And it is this variety that the apologists for Islam latch on to. They will throw many of these diverse cultures under the bus, in order to save the honour of the one common factor: Islam.
I say all this is a problem for Islam. But of course it’s actually a problem for Muslims. And more recently has become a problem for non-Muslims.
Saira Gives up on Islam
See the follow up to this post, The Further Enlightenment of Saira Khan, which looks first at the Mirror report on Saira no longer being a practicing Muslim, and then links to the BBC report of death threats against her.
There’s always some point in a discussion, having had a dig at Islam, there comes a necessary aside. So here it is, for future reference.
“Why do you pick on Islam? What about Sikhs, Hindus? What about Christianity?”
This question inevitably follows. I don’t only pick on Islam, but it does attract greater attention now.
Because, after a lifetime of opposing Christianity and seeing secular success in taming it, Islam has burst on the scene in the UK and undone much of the work of secular liberal progress. To the point that in support of ‘minorities’ (but not minorities within minorities – FGM victims, persecuted and killed for honour, apostates) the second largest religion in the world gets a free pass on way too much of its own bigotry.
The rhetoric of ‘Victim Islam’ (fake Islamophobia) has even contributed to many young people rejecting secular liberal values like free speech, in favour of the dangerous ‘hate speech’ laws.
It started with Blair, funding self-appointed Islamic organisations, several later shut down for their links to extremists. It has continued after 9/11, with excessive and poor attempts to ‘protect’ Muslims in the UK, with ridiculous statements like “Nothing to do with Islam”. Lies like that have only increased anti-Muslim sentiment as well as opposition to Islam.
So, yes. I oppose Christianity and Islam, explicitly. I find them both antithetical to Humanist liberal values. I won’t support their legal outlaw, or any violence against their followers. But I do oppose them and argue against their support.
As for Hindu and Sikh religions … I do criticise them, when the need arises. In the UK we occasionally have reason to criticise. But, anecdotally, personally, I find they accept the secular nature of the UK more readily. So, while I’d probably disagree with them on some grounds, I don’t know enough or find I’ve needed to know enough to make an issue of it.
Islam and Christianity are in my face constantly. Fair enough – proselytise by all means. But expect a response. And don’t think I’ll look the other way, as many police, politicians and press have done, actively, in the face of evil done in the name of or under the cover of religion.
You can tell I’m not one of the passive aggressive atheists that complain more about atheists like me, in some daft deference to religion. Religions deserve ZERO deference. They are ideologies, like any other. To be criticised and ridiculed, like any other. There is a ‘spiritual’ aspect, but religions are NOT about spirituality, but about propagating THEIR particular dogmas, politically.
There are many very nice Christians, Muslims and other religious people that follow their religion and don’t ram it down my throat, and don’t try to impose their personal ideas of sexual propriety on others (it’s always about sex). Many in my own family are like that. I’ll argue the toss over religion, if they like, but otherwise, their beliefs are their business.
I’ll even agree that some, a few, religious people are far nicer than most non-religious people. There’s a reason. Nice people are attracted to the sales pitch of religion, and naturally cherry pick just the Goldilocks parts of the doctrine. The bad people in religion I’d say were already religious, and somehow manage to convince themselves there’s no incongruity: Roman Catholic Mafia gangsters, paedophile priests. So, anyone that is seriously lacking in empathy isn’t going to be attracted to the nice religious sales pitch, and if they have no need for religion, they will boost the number of evil non-religious people: the non-religious killing regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.
But on the whole, and very specifically too in some cases, religion is a divisive force that I oppose.
That’s how it is. I value Global Liberal Secular Democratic Humanism. Not religion. Certainly not Islam.
The recent and undeniably stupid Tommy Robinson walked into jail. And this has given cover to many people that wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Perhaps made uncomfortable by his ‘activist journalism’, as he’s moved away from street protest himself, this last installment has proved too much of a temptation.
This is a thinly disguised hit piece on Robinson. Though disguised as general commentary on ‘extremism’ politics, that talks about the funding of political enterprises, it also throws in a few other individuals, but only in passing, for good measure, to keep up the tone so that it looks less like a hit piece with one target. He mentions Katie Hopkins, for example. But, Robinson gets more paragraphs than anyone else.
Why is Robinson lumped in with extremists? What has been extreme, exactly, about his activism? If you think he has, could you be explicit.
He created a street protest movement, the EDL, which he says himself was beleaguered because it attracted the unsavoury elements. Some of Robinson’s and the EDL’s reported thuggish behaviour was actually throwing those elements out. You’ll also note that in another context, when AntiFa are on the scene there’s often violence, and ‘arrests’ are reported – though what fails to be reported is that it’s usually AntiFa doing the attacking and sustaining most arrests. No matter. Blame Robinson.
So, other than a street protest movement, what extremism?
I don’t think Labour is considered an extreme party even though it has attracted left wing extremists all along, and arguably has them running the show now – but all very mainstream.
It doesn’t take Nick long to get down to trolling the uneducated masses. There’s the usually snobbish hat tip to the working class ‘beer hall’. But I suppose the ‘Doc Martens’ is very much a reference to the Reggae loving skinheads against fascism, isn’t it? Oh, well, may be not. Football thugs? Yes, that must be it.
On the point of football, what’s not covered here is the Football Lads Alliance. Look on Twitter and they are clearly labelled in the same light as Robinson often is: fascists, Nazis, racists. The FLA t might well appear on Nick’s radar when it has smeared so sufficiently to let Nick write a piece on it without seeming to be too obviously anti-working class. British football has undergone a transformation since its skinhead ‘bovver boot’ days. It’s now a family affair, supporting local communities, with female directors and women’s teams becoming stars alongside their male first team counterparts. Watch any FLA march and you’ll see people of all ethnicities, and, gosh, some females. And banners representing elements of supporters of many clubs – it’s serious business if you can unite football ‘thugs’. It turns out their message is pretty much the same as Tommy Robinson’s – it’s just that Tommy Robinson has been louder, and he’s been saying it longer.
Robinson has some issues, there’s no doubt. But, his actual criminality is, when you examine it, far more mundane than many other street activist groups, such as AntiFa, that not only get a pass from the press (if they can keep the violence below the radar) but are actually endorsed as Nazi-punchers. Robinson’s criminality emerges from his over exuberant stupidity more than any criminal intent, and also gets a good helping from conveniently unrelated charges being filed, and even thrown out of court. And what he genuinely does do that is criminal doesn’t remotely compare to the criminality that he protests, both terrorism and grooming gangs.
Yet more people on the ‘progressive left’ hate Robinson with a passion they seem unable to muster for the child killers and child rapists. They’ll happily scream about Robinson, but would be much happier if they could sweep the bomb bits, body parts and broken childhoods under the carpet.
To call (or, as in Nicks piece, to sneakily imply, with sufficient deniability) Robinson an extremist is extremely dishonest.
When Julia Ebner misrepresented Robinson in this way, though a little more explicitly, with less deniability, she did it in the Guardian, but while she worked out of the offices of Quilliam. Haras Rafiq felt it necessary to go on Newsnight with Robinson and actually deny that he, or Quilliam, endorsed what Ebner had written. Ebner didn’t last long after that. She still manages to do what Nick has done here: write a piece ostensibly on extremist politics, but name dropping Robinson with sufficient frequency, alongside the names of actual extremists, that the inference is near impossible to not to fall for. Throw ‘alt-right’ in a few times, without actually saying Robinson is alt-right, and that will be enough to get retweets* of the article by those that will do the job more explicitly. And, when writing these articles, conveniently avoid an explicit meaning of the term alt-right – because Robinson is obviously not alt-right, since in terms of racism Robinson is as polar opposite of Richard Spencer as Nick Cohen is. But, the ‘racist’ smears will follow on nicely just by making sure ‘Tommy Robinson’ and ‘alt-right’ appear in the same article that avoids saying the former IS NOT the latter.
*Money making click bait that helps Nick’s income? Odd, that Nick, a paid journalist, homes in on Robinson’s earning capacity, as if earning a living from a cause one is passionate about is less moral than other moralising journalism. That’s how the world works.
Oh, and apparently, Robinson has been raised to the grand position of ‘politician’ or is it lowered – you can never tell with politicians. Anyway, this seems absurd:
Most conservatives steered well clear of Tommy Robinson, even though he was one of the few politicians who can speak well to the racist strain in white working class British culture.
“can speak well to”? Well, if joining with people of various ethnicities, targeting one specific political judicial religious ideology, and being particularly clear that his real targets are Islamists, terrorists and grooming gangs, amounts to racism, then surely criticising the Indian Caste system or FGM is racist too. Yes, I know that some ‘progressive’ numpties think it is, but that’s besides the point. Pointing an accusing finger at the abusers and terrorists that currently over-represent in some (non-Monolithic) ‘communities’ is not racism.
In this context, you should note, though it’s often ignored, that Tommy Robinson targets the genuinely ‘Islamophobic’ politicians, police and press. You know, the ones that have such an irrational fear of Islam they will look the other way as abuse goes on, as Andrew Norfolk did, until he snapped out of his ‘progressive’ mindset and came to his senses.
“racist strain in white working class British culture” – Too easy, Nick. You know full well that for so many, this means ALL working class people. I hear this from people that are, or were working class too, but managed to get a reasonable education, leave their council estates for the suburbs, and now look down on the scum they left behind. The very people that jump down your throat, if, in talking about ISIS, you don’t qualify it with NOT ALL MUSLIMS.
What about the title of the article? “Tommy Robinson and the rise of the new extremists”
Well, it doesn’t actually call Robinson an extremist. And we often see article authors using the get out of jail card, “Well, I didn’t write the headline.”
Many working class people, that lack the sophisticated education enjoyed by many that look down on them, are far more ‘straight talking’ – which obviously means not being as capable of being judicious with their smears as the more literary journalists that thinly disguise their contempt for the likes of Robinson.
For other topics of public concern, what would be called ‘people power’, is extremism when engaging in the thoroughly decent thing of taking a dislike to Islam. Why do religions get such unholy passes to promote such barbaric ideas, and then get away with claiming to be a religion of peace?
It’s typical that the credibility of a call to ‘people power’ very much depends on who is doing the calling. Jeremy Corbyn manages to appear interested in the people, while looking down on the actual people that have no voice. He’s become the leader of the Labour party on the back of his ‘say nothing, commit to nothing‘ skills in this regard (“I abhor all bombing”).
But I’m afraid there’s somebody else shouting now, making the very claims about police and political corruption that allowed grooming gangs to operate in plain sight. Maggie Oliver investigated and brought to justice just a small number of the Rochdale grooming gang members. Her success has given her a voice (and funnily enough, a means of earning a living from her valuable experiences). What’s Maggie Oliver calling for now?
Tommy Robinson was doing people power when ‘Islamophobia’ (the fear of criticising Islam or Muslims) was well established by Blair’s multiculturalist funding of self declared Muslim representative organisations.
Now, Maggie Oliver is saying what Robinson has been saying:
The vast majority of police officers are doing the very best they can…. it’s those at the TOP who have no conscience or moral code and have put their own self servicing interests above their duty to protect, uphold the LAW with honesty & integrity! And they are not ACCOUNTABLE! https://t.co/b3gW7PzkVY
Remember, Islam is a very conservative political judicial religious ideology. The judicial part is Sharia, that so many Muslims turn to for justice. The politics is written into all religions that make social prescriptions and proscriptions, but it’s even more explicit in Islam, which is anti-secular and has an explicit goal of Islamic domination written into it.
Many traditional liberals like Nick have already commented on how the Left’s alliance with Islamism is characteristic of actual extremes having common goals – rub out the sensible voices in the middle and deal with the final battle of what looks like interchangeable good and evil later.
I won’t bother asking for examples of Robinson’s racism. They never materialise. Some very credible examples would have appeared by now were there any truth in the charge. That failed narrative has moved on.
The ‘far-right’, ‘alt-right’ and ‘extremist’ charges are much easier to make and not support, when you don’t even have to back them up. They are charges that are vague enough that they are far easier to deny you made them.
So, what extremes does Robinson represent? Well, you could actually make the effort to ask him.
To write a piece about extremism, and include Tommy Robinson, who Nick has sort of defended in other contexts, and the only difference then and now is his latest arrest, … well, that seems like outright dishonesty.
Sure, Nick thought Robinson didn’t help himself. But an extremist? Like, comparable to say an Islamic extremist? Seriously? Has Tommy Robinson EVER called for the harming or ANYONE?
If we take Anjem Choudary, who approves of death for apostasy, as the low bar of extremism, and ISIS as the high bar, compared to which even Hitler wins only because of numbers, then ‘extremist’ is already pretty wide. Even then, based on death for apostasy alone, that’s a lot of Muslims you’re calling extremists.
How about AntiFa? Sure. They are extremists. They shut down people they disagree with. Violently. That’s pretty extreme. Has Robinson EVER recommended that?
No. Nick’s piece is pure bullshit, when you look at in that context.
It’s funny, because I’m pretty sure Nick has lamented the tendency for the Left to call everyone Nazis, fascists, and other things they are not. What happened?
I suppose otherwise rational people can go off the rails sometimes.
This event happened a few years back. “Public reactions to LGBT-Muslim Solidarity initiative – East London, 21 October 2015”:
The reason I’m posting now is that Peter Tatchell is still selling this narrative.
It was a brave attempt by the great Peter Tatchell, the long term campaigner for LBGT cause against persecution, particularly by the law and the police.
I support Peter’s support of gay Muslims. An since I support freedom of belief, I support their right to be gay and Muslim. No problem.
Unfortunately, Peter suffers from the common blindness that has a tendency to think a critic of Islam is an anti-Muslim bigot. He has joined in the smears of people outspoken about Islam. And it’s this aspect of the narrative being sold here that I object to.
Here’s the problem in a nutshell, 2 minutes in:
“I feel that LGBT communities and Muslim communities are ideally placed to show solidarity with one another because of the long history of homophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment that they both face.”
Let’s go through some of the problems with this statement, that sweeps across time and geography selectively picking out the narrative that Peter Tatchell has been pushing for some time.
LGBT communities, and Muslim communities are not monoliths (we are told so often) that have some uniting common ground.
The long history of homophobia in Britain is there to be examined. But now? Not so much … at least not in law, and not in the general population. Some remnant homophobia among the ignorant remains, but generally homosexuality is socially accepted.
The most homophobic messages in Britain today come from religious people, and, accounting for population proportions, proportionately more from Muslim ‘communities’. That is, after all, why this event was put on. Look up the statistics on the percentage of Muslims that think homosexuality should be illegal.
And, you will find that the most horrendous stories where gay people are rejected wholesale by family and community are from gay Muslims and ex-Muslims. The video above starts with one such story, and others are recounted. And, since the religion is often specifically cited as the reason for the rejection and persecution, the idea that LGBT communities, and Muslim communities have something in common is laughable – unless you see the common ground as actually having polar opposite views on homosexuality.
Of course, not all Muslims are homophobic. And not all LBGT are not anti-Muslim. And plenty of LGBT people are anti-Islam. And not all non-Muslims are not homophobic.
It’s a messy world, and the above poor attempt to persuade Muslims that they have a lot in common with LBGT because they are both persecuted is a lie. LBGT is well accepted now in the wider British society, and it’s Muslims doing most of the persecuting of LBGT now, proportionate to population. It’s an insane narrative to suggest the LGBT community and the Muslim community are allies.
Then, add to that the fact that Muslims are not a minority.
We are told there are 1.8 billion Muslims. That isn’t a minority. It’s the 2nd largest and fastest growing religion. And in ‘Muslim lands’ (that monolithic term beloved by many Muslims) LBGT Muslims and ex-Muslims are at risk of losing their lives. You will have seen the images of gay men hanged on cranes in public squares in Iran.
Nevertheless, you can bet your life that without having to endorse LBGT one iota, the Islamic homophobes will be rubbing their hands, because their victim status has been turned up a notch and validated by the LBGT community in this video. This is madness.
Oh, wait. I’ll tell you where there’s common ground between LBGT and homophobic misogynistic Muslim groups. When Maryam Namazie tried to present her views on the misogynistic nature of Islam at a university, the ISOC shut her down. And then the LBGTSOC backed up the ISOC, not Maryam. This is madness.
By all means get as much support from the Muslim communities as you can. Try to persuaded them that freedom of belief and freedom of sexual orientation are valuable freedoms. It was obviously nice to see that some Muslims agreed (we don’t know to what extent the video was edited to give that impression).
But the problem with trying to set a false narrative is it has the habit of backfiring.
[2019-04-08: As Peter found out with events playing out in Birmingham and Manchester schools where the ‘No Outsider’ programme has been rejected on religious grounds by Muslim parents.]
The emperor’s nakedness is obvious. And speaking of nakedness, at 2:13
Muslim: If I don’t approve this, doesn’t mean they are my enemy. It doesn’t mean I haven’t got tolerance against (for) them. I am tolerant. …
That sounds like freedom of belief and tolerance to me.
Off screen interviewer: Don’t you believe that the fact you are saying that you don’t approve of something is lessening people who are gay and Muslim. You’re not saying that they deserve to be gay.
This is typical Leftie BS. You’re worth is not set by whether someone believes that being gay is OK. It is set by yourself. If this Muslim man, as a parent of a gay son or daughter, were to persecute them, that would be infringing on their freedom. But if he disapproves, but is tolerant of them, then what’s the problem? After all, Peter Tatchell is here preaching tolerance and he’s not a Muslim. And I doubt all ex-Muslims present approve of Islam.
Muslim: Do you approve of somebody walking barefoot without clothes?
To which one could answer yes or no, depending on one’s approval or disapproval. That’s freedom of belief. I think he expected her to disapprove, but she may have been about to approve. But she lost the plot when she tried to deny the comparison to the right to express your feelings in nakedness to the rights of LBGT. He wasn’t denying rights, he was speaking of personal approval, which is free to give or not.
They do get a bit confused.
Of course, the interviewer is merely arguing here that the Muslim’s view is devaluing. It’s a handy rhetorical tool – it can be useful to throw back at someone that accuses you of devaluing them, while they happily devalue you. Where have we seen that before? Oh, yes, when Peter Tatchell complains about how Muslims are devalued by critics of Islam, and then goes on to devalue those critics of Islam, calling them anti-Muslim bigots.
So, to be clear, freedom of belief is important. Thought policing, the persecution of people for their beliefs, is bad. But, trying to persuade someone to change their beliefs, through dialogue, and through protest (Peter Tatchell’s fame is built on it) is legitimate.
Sadly, Peter doesn’t seem to think this is the case when it comes to criticising or protesting against Islam, because, as this narrative goes, Muslims are a minority ally of the LBGT community.
Who knew? Someone best tell the gays and their hangmen in Iran that they are allies.
Another Muslim interviewed, asked if they should unite is against a common oppression, having just been told that his community is doing the oppressing:
The hot trend at the time of writing is the call for the Conservative Party to investigate itself for the amount of ‘Islamophobia’ engaged in, by members or MPs.
Obviously, this is kick-back for the accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party, and it looks like Corbyn is now benefiting from his alliances in the Islamic world, as race baiting CMB and their puppet master Miqdaad Versi push this for all they’re worth.
To Conservatives in particular. You have lost the narrative to Islamic fundamentalists. You bought into the ‘multiculturalism’ narrative of Blair’s Labour, and you have lost. But, as you’ll see, you can start to save your party.
Politicians generally. You are being conned on ‘Islamophobia’.
The people know this.
The people know that YOU know this.
Do you realise the contempt with which you are currently held for this cowardice?
Islamophobia:
a) a tool used by Islamists (those politically motivated to further Islam and Sharia)
to shut down discussion of the worst practices in Islam,
by conflating criticism of Islam, anti-Muslim bigotry, and racism.
b) a fear instilled in Muslims, based on indoctrination into a cultish reverence
for Mohammed and the Quran,
such they submit themselves to Islam,
often above family members,
so that some would kill their own children or siblings if they left Islam.
c) a fear instilled in Muslims by Islamic fundamentalists,
that to speak out about the bad practices in Islam is
un-Islamic, treason, blasphemous, heretical,
even default apostasy by fiat … and threateningly, a death sentence
d) the fear of Islam instilled into UK politicians, police and press that shuts them up,
and even persuades them to collude in the silencing of those that speak out about the worst aspects of Islam.
e) the fear of Islam instilled in politicians across Europe,
that Muslim unrest is more difficult to deal with than any popularist reactionary unrest,
so that they would rather kow tow to Muslim community demands.
This is the reason authorities and cowards would rather deal with general working class public disorder than Islami… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Islamist have succeeded. We realise you just want it all to go away. Your opponents know how to play this game. It’s a rhetorical method that works very well throughout the wider Islamic world. But, you are too scared to do anything about it.
Andrew Norfolk knew of this fear of Islam, when he accepted he’d sat on a report on paedophile Muslim grooming gangs, and let the rapes continue unexposed.
Maggie Oliver knew this, when her GMP seniors deflected her from investigating a case. Only with #threegirls in Rochdale, did she get anywhere.
Maggie Oliver realises you have no stomach to do the right thing. So she now calls for people power.
But we know what you politicians and police have done when people have raised this. We have seen you smear those that speak out, or at best, you have looked the other way.
Labour sacked MP Sarah Champion. They even deselected a Labour councillor.
Decent head teacher, Ray Honeyford, was hounded out, three decades ago, for trying to protect and improve the lot of children, and YOU or your fellow MPs let this happen.
Here’s what you can do.
You can start by rejecting the term ‘Islamophobia’.
Islam is the set of ideas.
Muslims are the people.
Oppose actual anti-Muslim bigotry, where individual decent Muslims are persecuted.
Oppose racism.
On that last point, I’m sure you’ve been told, but, Islam is not a race. There are many ‘white’ Muslims, and many ‘non-white’ non-Muslims. Make sure you are prosecuting actual racism, and not opinions on what is just another set of ideas.
If you play this ‘Islamophobia’ game, of seeing Muslims as victims while a minority, then you’ll find that you are becoming the minority.
Decent secular Muslims will tell you all this too. Perhaps you don’t want to listen. Perhaps you’ve already submitted to Islam.
Here’s James O-Brien on Amber Rudd’s speech at the Conservative party conference: this clip. Have a listen, it’s worth it.
Just a bit of angry rhetoric? Not quite. Here’s the text of what he said. First, the opening from the LBC web page:
This startling observation stopped James O’Brien in his tracks – the eerie similarities between Amber Rudd’s plan to list foreign workers and a passage in Mein Kampf.
The eerie similarities? If that’s so then LBC’s programme listing has eerie similarities to Hitler’s passage in Mein Kampf – at least LBC’s programme list is actually a list, while Rudd’s speech did not.
So, what did O’Brien say? Well, here it is. But bear in mind that Rudd said nothing like this, didn’t say a thing about lists, about a nations existence and greatness, a sharp line of distinction, didn’t give an anecdote about a plasterer, … And yet O’Brien re-reads this in parts, emphasising the meanings from Mein Kampf, with not a jot from Rudd’s speech.
“Very important that firms declare how much of their workforce is foreign because they’re just domiciled in this state simply as earners of their livelihood there. They’re not members of the nation, they’re not members of the foundation and the support of the nation’s existence and greatness.
You have to have a sharp line of distinction between those who are members of the nation and those who are just domiciled here as earners of their livelihoods.”
No, that wasn’t from Amber Rudd’s speech yesterday, I’m really sorry, that’s from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
A sharp line of distinction between those who as members of the nation are the foundation and support of its existence and those who are domiciled in the state simply as earners of their livelihood here. Do you recognise that need for a sharp distinction? Do you feel it? Do you applaud that today?
Do you cheer it because you’ve heard some meaningless anecdote about plasterer whose wages have gone up by roughly the same percentage over the last ten or fifteen years that almost everybody else in the British workforce has? You see the need for that sharp line of distinction? Are you going to swallow that today?
A sharp line of distinction between those who are the foundation and support of the nation’s existence and greatness. And those, like almost everybody I’ve encountered so far today, who were just domiciled in the states simply as earners of their livelihood here. What do you think will come next?
If you’re going to have a sharp line of distinction between people born here and people who just work here, you’re enacting chapter two of Mein Kempf. Strange times.
“sharp line of distinction” – quoted once from Mein Kampf, and then repeated four more times. Who would come away from this thinking that phrase wasn’t part of Rudd’s speech?
This is like reading Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speech and presenting it as Malcom-X. No. It’s worse than that. Because despite the differences, at least King and Malcom-X were on the same subject. This Holocaust precursor from Hitler was actually about hate and demonisation. Nowhere did Rudd demonise or even criticise foreign workers in her speech. What criticism she did include was entirely about the current UK methods of managing foreign workers. This is a particular malicious and dishonest clip from O’Brien – and plenty of people have bought it hook line and sinker.
Citing and re-citing phrases from Mein Kampf and playing on those words and meaning as if they are Rudd’s, is a straw man argument clearer than many I’ve seen for a long time.
By all means disagree with the policy, but at least criticise the policy and not some trumped up misrepresentation.
It’s difficult to emphasise how bad this is. His repeat of the “sharp line of distinction” very specifically gives the impression it’s in Rudd’s speech. I’ve seen this clip posted on a Lib Dem Facebook page a few times, and people are buying it, reposting it, and becoming outraged at the ‘fact’ that Rudd is a Nazi.
At this point it’s worth looking at a tweet from O’Brien:
What’s really ugly is the pundits and politicos who are informed enough to understand all this still telling lies to people who trust them.
No kidding. I’ve added the twitter ‘exchange’ below as an update. Won’t defend his own misrepresentations but happy to point it out in others.
What Rudd Said
I’m not kidding about this. Some people are seriously claiming the Tories are fascists, and it isn’t being used metaphorically. A UK elected government, that will abide by UK election rules and hand over power if they lose the next election, that have none of the actual features of actual fascist governments.
Let’s have a look at what Rudd actually said in this context of foreign workers.
I believe immigration has brought many benefits to the nation. It has enhanced our economy, our society and our culture.
This is why I want to reduce net migration while continuing to ensure we attract the brightest and the best.
Because it’s only by reducing the numbers back down to sustainable levels that we can change the tide of public opinion … so once again immigration is something we can all welcome.
The test should ensure people coming here are filling gaps in the labour market, not taking jobs British people could do.
But it’s become a tick box exercise, allowing some firms to get away with not training local people. We won’t win in the world if we don’t do more to upskill our own workforce.
No xenophobic closing of doors, but a limit on immigration to manageable levels.
Actually making a case for immigration, at manageable levels.
Acknowledgement of the concerns that caused the Brexit win.
This is the only reference to a ‘test’ on immigrants, and it’s not a call for a test but rather a measure of policy effectiveness.
She’s actually addressing what many people have wanted addressing, the failure to train British citizens.
Labour and Lib Dems (I’m a member of the latter) have not been shy about demanding better education and training of our young people, and have been quick to complain about the lack of training. The current system sees some employers using foreign workers when they should be training British people. Note that this is necessary for British competitiveness – something Labour and Lib Dems sign up to.
These are not controversial points from Rudd. Prior to Brexit and Syria and Merkel’s cock up, this could have come from any of the major parties, not just UKIP. Labour and Tories have lower immigration targets.
The O’Brien misrepresentation and his responsibility for its spread on social media is the only controversial issue here.
I dropped the above criticism in O’Brien’s Twitter stream once or twice soon after I posted it here and had no reaction from him – O’Brien owes me nothing, fair enough. I’ve posted it elsewhere, but I haven’t trolled O’Brien with it. Then I saw this retweet of an O’Brien tweet …
I’d like to think his blocking me was out of shame for his own dishonesty, but I doubt it.
I was asked what Richard Spencer said that was wrong in the interview with Gary Young.
Where do I start. Well, let’s start right here – and this alone has many things wrong with it:
“Africans have benefited from the experience of white supremacy”
No. On many counts. If this rambles a bit, it’s because there is so much wrong with it and the notions its built on.
Starting with those living at the time of slavery, there were zero benefits and lots of negatives to being a slave, … or do you not think so? Slavery was a system of supreme power and cruelty. Not really something our slave owning ancestors can be proud of. Slavery showed no intrinsic sign of superior intellect. Many working hands on slave ships might have been pressed into service and will have been dumber than many of the slaves they transported. Many slave owners survived by their capacity for cruelty, not because of their intellect. But sure, some cruel and intelligent slavers made a good living. All of which begs the question, is intellectual superiority enough, or even necessary, for power supremacy?
So, let’s have a look at ‘supremacy’ more generally. We know from the way the white supremacy narrative goes that they think the power superiority of Europe derives from a greater intelligence, so I’ll try to focus on power and intelligence first.
Smart People or Dumb Luck
Not all modern self-made millionaires are the brightest people. They make their money by being hard working, persistent, good at making money off the work others put in, or luck.
There are many rich crooks that earn their money by being just clever enough to outwit the competition in their own sphere, and just clever enough to steal from the less clever, and crooks need not be particularly bright in other respects. Crooks can also make money off people far brighter than themselves. All it takes is the capacity to break a trust, to engage in fraudulent and corrupt practices, or to be brutal.
There are some really clever people, with high IQs, that don’t have the capacity for empathy that others have, and are quite able to manipulate their way to power. We call them sociopaths, or psychopaths (clinical details of terminology aside) – they are not all mad killers.
Oddly, the most empathetic people we have can suffer a severe empathy loss, and so we find that many very empathetic people have none to spare for the sociopath. What? You think the sociopath chose to be born with that empathy empty brain? Someone with a high empathy, but without the intellect or interest to think things through, will see these fellow humans as being nothing but non-human monsters.
Conversely, the natural sociopath with an intellect can learn the skill of appearing to have empathy while feeling none.
Some sociopaths might be ruthless and selfish in business, while others might make great contributions to our societies because they are single minded in their focus on what interests them, rather than dedicating time and energy to feeding their feelings towards others.
It’s and odd world.
So, with this, and many other factors that lead to power, in a society as a whole, and members of a particular society, what does it mean to be ‘supreme’, to be a ‘white supremacist’ in particular. This ‘supremacy’ attribute is a pretty complicated thing.
European Supremacy … Wasn’t Your Whiteness
The power superiority of European nations came from fortunate circumstances in Europe.
At one time other parts of the world were way ahead of Europe. There hasn’t been enough time in a few short centuries for evolution to have an impact to make white Europeans suddenly smarter.
And, there’s a certain irony here in that many white supremacists are idiots that reject much of evolutionary theory, yet they think they are able to figure out that ‘something’ made white Europeans smarter, all of a sudden. Round about 1500, maybe? Or 1700? Who knows when we lucky whites became supreme, but I know that for some time, in what we call ‘the dark ages’, we weren’t.
The strange truth is that centuries ago, any bell curve difference on intellectual supremacy was already there when Europe was a dumber civilization. If Europeans got smarter, it wasn’t some sudden genetic brain boost.
If anything history would suggest that it was mixing of cultures made Europe ‘superior’ in power.
A single stable culture that works well in a stable climate setting with sufficient resources has little pressure for technological change.
But warring small nation states with lots of trade, and an exchange of ideas and peoples, stimulates change. The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, science, philosophy, … if they come together they can create massive progress, as they did in Europe.
The introduction of Arabic works, the re-introduction of Greek works, they all boosted a Europe that was awakening in the ruins of Rome, looking back on a civilization that had been way ahead in its prime. Then, once technical progress was under way, it took off quickly – which in itself is a massive story, involving many famous people, most of which were ‘white’ because, as happens with one’s religion, or nationality, they happened to be born where they were. Any bright African, Indian, Asian in Europe at that time, free of any racist persecution, could join in as well as any white person – except that for many of our famous early scientists, privilege gave them the capacity to do the work they did.
That’s why much European science history is ‘white’, not because of any innate white supremacy. This idea of being lucky enough for many factors to come together is the reason that during our European ‘Dark Ages’, Islamic civilisation prospered – not because Islam has some superior message that to hand.
Social change that’s unnecessary in small tribal systems becomes crucial in a more complex mercantile trading and technical societies. Wars and revolutions bring change too, but do much damage. Democracy works better.
But a democracy doesn’t work so well if many of those within it are actual or effective slaves.
Kings and lords ruled Europe. But the barons wanted a greater say. And while aristocratic elites still ruled, the money of mercantile power started to speak. Actual slaves, and the non-elite free men, and women, they all eventually wanted the freedoms the elites enjoyed.
Education spread, increasing the diversity of opportunity with it. With luck, a bright kid from some slum could break out, end up at university, and become a great engineer, while his intelligent counterpart in a South American tribe has no chance of learning any of the mathematics and science his European brother is exposed to. Privilege begets privilege, unless the privileged and powerful are prepared to share what they have.
All this comes together in Europe, and by fortune of circumstances, both dumb and bright white people, far from supreme, living in slums in the cities of the west, start to demand fairer conditions. Social change comes along with the greater voting franchise. A better understanding of biology, health, suffering … all these inspire many bright people to be better towards their fellow humans, to demand change.
What amounts to a supremacy of power, money, technology, science, brings European states into competition, war, and world domination, at the very time social improvements are afoot at home. This contradiction is why we have heroes and villains, often in one and the same person: Churchill, Washington … great leaders when their countries needed them, but not averse to indulging in the less worthy norms of their times.
Not all changes are smooth or balanced. While a good man might be helping the poor in slums back home, his sibling might be in India beating down an uprising of oppressed and starving people. The power supremacy that can bring good continues to bring much harm in parallel. This is the messy world of the reality of Empire, not the simplistic ‘white supremacist’ world that idiots like Richard Spencer have in their minds. There are many dumb, evil and far from supreme people among the supreme European race, and many very bright and genuinely superior intellects among the people oppressed by this European superiority.
Don’t get me wrong. Empires have come and gone in the past. It was mostly shear good or bad fortune that determined whether you were a thicko with power in the supreme echelons of the white European culture, because your aunt was bedded by some duke, or you were a brown genius trying to figure out how to get this white European oppression out of your country, … while still having to deal with cruel idiots in your own culture that made money off the back of the oppressors and helped them maintain the oppression.
This is a very messy history with so many strands that it’s impossible to do them all justice here. But it should be clear enough that ‘white supremacism’ is one of the dumbest notions you could dream up, if only for the fact that so many white supremacists are thick. What the heck is supposed to be supreme about them?
I’m All White Jack
The big joke is that by around the time Europe becomes a supreme power base, we are already mixed race. Apart from some isolated families that protect their ‘blood lines’, whether for race or mere genealogical reasons, we have been screwing our way around the world for several hundred years, and many people that think they are true blood white are not.
How about all white supremacists subject themselves to DNA tests and ANY ‘impure non-white genes’ gets you rejected from the master race. Good luck with that. Many will be rejected.
The thing is, this definition of ‘white’ that’s supposed confer supremacy is such that a) it doesn’t exist; b) it certainly doesn’t confer supremacy (again, have you seen some of these dumbos).
But, let’s go with one of the tools the white supremacists use. Let’s play ‘Bell Curve’.
Suppose you can categorise of peoples, that are identifiable by ‘race’, and that some bell curves on intelligence show Group A is higher than group B on some measure. What does that mean? …
It means in the overlap there are some seriously unintelligent people in both A and B. And there are some people in Group B that are brighter than most people in group A, the supposedly supreme group. That’s the problem – individuals are not the population they are in: bell curves have tails, in both directions.
So, what do I want, if YOU insist we must split society?
I’ll tell you. I want to be in the group of white, black, brown, yellow, purple, any colour, as long as they are the smart non-racist ones. Those smart Jews that are top of the charts? I want to be in their camp, not stuck with knuckle dragging racist morons of my own race.
The thing is, and this is where much of the controversy lies, statistics can be helpful.
Identify a group and see that there is a group tendency to have some health deficiency, and you can target treatment better. But even here, individuals still count. Not all people in a statistically identifiable genetic group need have the condition your looking at – and that has serious implications if you get the targeted treatment wrong. If group A has a tendency to have the condition more than those in group B, so you target only group A, you leave those in group B with the condition to suffer? Such a statistical difference can only benefit everyone if limited resources are distributed according to the relative number of people in the groups, and the relative occurrence of the conditions. You have to do a lot of Bayesian stuff to be effective. You can’t simply say, “Oh, group A has a high statistical bias for this condition, we’ll target only group A.”
And yet this is what the ‘white supremacists’ don’t get about the bell curves that they rely on for intelligence and supposed ‘supremacy’. It’s more complicated than just ‘race’ – and their racism isn’t even just about ‘actual race’, but apparent race, because, at least until they have prepared the internment camps where they too are forced to endure genetic testing necessary to determine their own racial purity. They can’t tell who’s white and who isn’t, outside a very simple stark difference in colour. You could have a fine blood line going back to mad King George, but if your great gran got too friendly with a slave, you’re out of the master race.
On so many grounds, these ‘white supremacists’ don’t really know what they are talking about.
But, hey, those bright Jews? If it’s genetic, why don’t we dumber white folks want what they have? If some Jews are so bright, how seriously dumb was Hitler. Exterminated or exported a minority people, because he could. And yet they could have helped Germany recover from the devastation that resulted from its previous screw up of WWI.
But those Jews, those philosophers, scientists that survived, helped make America great, not the dumb white supremacists in the south. One of my heroes, Erik Kandel, left Europe in his youth to escape extermination, and went on to contribute to neuroscience of memory. I’m sure most sensible people can happily name their own great Jew. If what the the ‘white supremacists’ think is true, can you give me a genetic injection of Jewish intelligence please. If, as many antisemite will tell you, the Jews are really ruling the world, because they are so good at it, then instead of exterminating them, why don’t we work towards making ourselves that bright? Why make the world dumber, by killing off the intelligent ones?
This ‘white supremacism’ simply doesn’t make sense by their own standards of reckoning.
Getting back to Spencer’s claim. No. Africans Americans didn’t benefit from ‘white’ supremacy. They suffered under white idiocy and cruelty that was coupled with technological supremacy. They suffered at the hands of Christian men and women that failed to live up to the principles that a Jew supposedly taught them. The number of ironies to the ‘white supremacy’ stupidity is astounding.
Thankfully, enough decent Europeans saw things differently, and just as they fought injustice that befell the ‘white inferiors’ at home, they opposed slavery. The African and Middle Eastern world under Islam continued with slavery long after Europe came to its senses. Europe banned slavery. It just took some time and a civil war to convince some thickos in America.
Mixed Race Europe
And, of course, winning a war on slavery and persecution doesn’t end it. It exists everywhere in the world.
But it’s odd that the white supremacists in the USA look to Europe, the place that has done most to end racism, that is the least racist place on earth. This is not an idle claim.
Check out Russia, China, Japan, South Africa, Middle East, India … These are not the mixed race societies you might hope for. These are not non-racist societies.
Why is there still an ethnic cleansing occurring every now and then around the world? Because one ethnic group doesn’t like another – they are racists. Why are there multicultural problems in Europe with Islam? Partly because of Islam’s own version of supremacy – it’s Islam or nothing.
Now, Islam is not a race – in fact one of the few good ideas that both Christianity and Islam encouraged (at least theoretically) was anti-racism.
But that doesn’t prevent Muslims being racist. There is much racism in the Islamic world. There are Arab, Pakistani, Turkish, Indonesian and other Islamic sub-cultures within Europe, and they won’t even intermarry among themselves as Muslims. Pakistanis are well known for keeping their ties with Pakistan. There are Pakistani families in the UK, screaming to high heaven about white racism, and yet they’d kill their daughter if she tried to marry a non-Muslim or non-Pakistani.
Again, we have to be clear, that this is messy. Many white, brown, black people get along fine, and mix socially, and marry, and have children. Europe is the least racist place on earth – even with our racists, of every colour and cultural origin. Has racism been ousted from Europe? No. Too many white Europeans are racist… but I’d hazard a guess that proportionally there are more POC racists in the UK than white racists.
So, what is Richard Spencer thinking when he talks of his superior white European heritage? Well, it’s not the whiteness that’s superior. He’s referring only to the coincidences of history that made Europe powerful, that then allowed it to dominate the rest of the world, for a time.
Politics, Race, Multiculturalism
Political ideas are far more important than skin colour or race – in fact I can’t think of anything that requires differentiation based on race or skin colour other than the beneficial statistics that can help target healing of genetic conditions – and even then, there are genetic differences within what Spencer would think of as a race that are just as important to health. Race is simply a really bad demarcation that mostly leads to great harm. Racism is a bad political idea.
To think in terms or racial superiority is so bad that it has caused a double whammy of hate. First, there are the racists themselves. Second, and more recently, in response to white racism, we have seen a SJW backlash that has become so toxic we have who knows how many white people actually hating their own race. This currently is a dangerous political direction that actually perpetuates racism.
Pause … Let than sink in for a moment: those that campaign vociferously against racism, that declare race isn’t important, see their own race as the only source of racism, and actively want an end to white people, while being quite willing to support other cultures and sub-cultures that are based to some extent on racial division.
But, on the bright side, at least the white SJW racists provide yet more evidence that white people can be as dumb as anyone of any other skin colour.
We should be discriminating – of political and cultural ideas, not race.
“Multiculturalism has failed!”
No. The implementation of multiculturalism has failed, by not being discriminating about what is of value and what is dangerous, in various cultures.
If you think good multiculturalism consists of exchanging recipes from around the world, while turning a blind eye to honour killing, or FGM, or forced marriage, then you are failing at multiculturalism, and failing to uphold the political egalitarianism that Europe was supposed to be famous for.
Living With History
Time to get back to the Richard Spencer quote. Let’s suppose he accepts that white supremacy was cruel and unjustified (I don’t know that he does). What does Richard Spencer mean when he says African Americans have benefited? Maybe Spencer is thinking, hey look ‘shithole’ Africa, compared to great lives African Americans have. He’s wrong there too. Centuries of persecution, with legal persecution stopped only decades ago, and social persecution still active (that’s what Spencer is engaged in) are not benefiting African Americans now, but still hindering them.
Can many African Americans have successful lives, better than many whites? Sure. That’s what equal opportunity should result in. And great lives too, if only they could avoid idiots like Spencer. Again, don’t get me wrong. There are stupid racist black Richard Spencers among groups like BLM – we’ve seen them. We’ve seen the idiots in Africa that think some of their ancient tribal practices are somehow superior to ‘white science’ – as if science is ‘white’. Dumb racism isn’t a white prerogative.
But, to take Spencer’s line of reasoning: that all that suffering in slavery, and post-slavery racist laws, and post-racist law racist persecution, … all that has given current African Americans the great reward of living in the soon to be great again USA.
There’s a trivial ironic truth to this point of view. I was saving this speech for the Oscars, but you get a preview …
I’d like to thank all the people that made me what I am today. I’d like to thank Hitler, and all the dead Jews in the Holocaust, for bringing my mother and father together, post-WWII, which led to my lucky existence – oh, and thanks to my dead uncle that was killed in the war. And I’d like to thank those that contributed to the Irish famine that drove my recent ancestors, on both sides, to leave Ireland and come to England and marry some English people. A special thanks to the invading Normans that persecuted others in my family tree that were mere serfs … oh, and my other ancestors that were Normans that persecuted them. A great big thank you to Julius Caesar, for without his invasion and killing of so many people we wouldn’t have some of the lovely straight roads that I enjoy today. I don’t know who you are, but thank you Neanderthal woman for being raped by my other early human ancestor. And thank you Africans, for starving and migrating to Europe in search of a better place – twice – you really made the effort form which I now benefit. And thank you, African ape mother of all humans today. Thank you all.
Any history that humans have gone through that has been objectively bad for some people and good for others, in terms of material reward, security, health, social status, self determination, has resulted in the people we are now. So, is a black guy in America now better off because his recent ancestor was brought over in a slave ship?
Trivially, yes. But it’s actually a dumb question, and a dumb point from Richard Spencer.
First, that person would not have been present in Africa today had his ancestor not been a victim of slavery. Any number of things might be different without European slavery. Islamic slavery was present in Africa long after it was stopped in Europe, so maybe his ancestor would have been a slave after all. Or maybe his tribe would have become slavers themselves in turn. Maybe if decent European explorers had brought only benefits of European progress to Africa … but hold on, before we get too far into this, remember that much of the technical and mercantile progress in Europe was made on the back of Africa and other places, by the consumption of the resources found there. Mmmm. Tricky. History is complicated, and the ‘What if?’ games don’t really tell us that much.
White Minority Identity
And now the ironic aspect of the Richard Spencer quote. The problem is that if you play the same game as Richard Spencer, and try to say that African Americans benefit now from the cruelty of past white Europeans, then he could be letting himself in for a whole pile to grief. White people, as defined in the simplistic terms of Richard Spencer, are actually a minority in the world population.
Suppose all non-whites made slaves of whites for a century or so, it wouldn’t be that bad, would it? After all, in a few more centuries there’d be a black Richard Spencer saying, …
“Whites have benefited from the experience of black supremacy”
No. Enough of the ‘white supremacy’ stupidity.
How about Identitarianism, White Separatism, and the other BS terms that mask a white supremacist agenda?
Anti-Racism
It’s simple:
If you want to marry and mate with someone of your own ethnic background, then go for it. Nobody is stopping you. As white separatists point out, there are many self contained ethnic groups that value their heritage, why can’t white people? Yeah, fine, again, go for it.
Here’s the problem – and it’s one I touched on above. What if I, as a white person, don’t want that? What if I am friends with and enjoy the company of people of all backgrounds, all races? What if we want to get together and make mixed race babies? What’s your problem?
Only I can tell you OUR problem is – YOU, Richard Spencer. Not because you want to play with white people only, but because you want to make the rest of us do it too.
And it’s not just the Richard Spencers of this world – and here’s where I depart form the current white hating SJW loons. Many ethnic groups insist on their own ethnic purity, just as Spencer does. Where they insist that applies to all their children, we have a problem, again, and it’s the problem caused by the separatists, of any colour or culture.
There are Muslims and Hindus in India that will kill anyone of the other religion that tries to marry their daughter. There are Pakistani heritage British men (get this, they are actually English by birth) that will kill their sister if she tries to marry outside their race and religion. Many of us are supporting the Kurds, and the Yazidis, and the Christians that have been persecuted by ISIS – and yet there will be some among those groups that will be separatists and will not let their culture die, and will persecute those of their own that try to stray.
This #ValentinesDay spare a thought for millions worldwide forced into marriage with a life of despair ahead of them & for those whose childhood is taken through early marriage & for those who are harmed because they are not allowed to choose their partner thro so called honour
It’s not just race. Religion is the other great divisive influence. My Catholic mother married my Protestant father, and she converted. My mother’s Catholic priest damned her children to hell. Well, I am an atheists, so I guess he got his wish. My wife’s Baptist mother, on first hearing my name, asked my future wife, “He’s not Catholic, is he?”
There are those that fear the loss of their race, culture or religion. But I’m afraid they are only entitled to perpetuate those in as much as they can personally, with like minded people.
They are not at liberty to demand that their children should be separatists racists too. They are not at liberty to protect their racial, cultural and religious ideology through separatism.
So, to Richard Spencer specifically, the rest of us don’t want your racist BS. Tough shit.
Opposite the Nymphs picture is Sappho, by Charles Mengin – supposedly one of the most alluring images of the female body. And I have to say that’s not too far off the mark. And there are other provocative representations of naked and part naked women around the gallery.
As a male curator explained,
“If we wanted to censor, we’d have to remove maybe half our exhibits.”
To be honest, they seemed as thrilled by the negative responses as much as the positive. It might be worth noting the deep love of art that would be a natural part of a curator’s persona: the human body, which they may well have been exposed to in the flesh while studying. I don’t think we’re dealing with 3rd wave feminist prudes here (though I know nothing more about the curator or artist that were involved in the event).
The other charge was that it was a publicity stunt. Again, he said that had they intended that, there are a number of things they would have done differently … and would have been better prepared … which brings us to the post cards: it seems they sold out, so much was the demand. They were not removed, as many have claimed.
I had conversations with some other visitors there, those that, like me, saw it as censorship initially … they too were changing their minds.
And as far as the stated intent, it worked well. On Saturday the picture was put back, and the post-it notes left in place. And the outrage on display (again, of which I might have been a willing contributor) was as visceral as any that we might accuse SJWs of engaging in.
So, given the pre-planned project by the artist Sonia Boyce ( #MAGSoniaBoyce ), I’ll give the benefit of any remaining doubt to those who run my favourite local gallery.
I follow Kenan Malik on Twitter. Decent guy, good articles, his book on my shelf reading list. I occasionally disagree, but you really can’t come across many more honest a journalist than Kenan. One of the good ‘lefties’. A Humanist. Keen on ‘justice’.
If I had to bet any money on who’d respond to this negatively and mistakenly, I’d have thought it’s be some of the supporters of the death penalty supporters that would like to castrate painfully and then hang draw and quarter child abusers. And it’s not as if Kenan misses the natural human sentiment of rage and vengeance that such cases arouse – that’s what his article was about, separating our baser desire for vengeance for the greater utility of justice.
But, no. what caught my eye first was a diversion into RadFem writing
Here’s Kenan’s tweet of the article, and then we’re off into RadFem land
A desire for vengeance is human but checks the pursuit of proper justice | My latest column for the Observer https://t.co/mQGCse7sGd
I read Kenan’s article again. Not a sign of him defending the abuser.
And so I thought I’d have a say too:
What followed for a few tweets was the usual back and forth of disagreement about what was actually in the article, until I wondered if Jo had read the article. So I simply asked.
And that’s when it turned to ‘mansplaining’. And what you’re going to see is a deep dive into childishness (and, for the record, that opinion is not based on their gender, but on their stupidity; for there’s plenty of male stupidity to go around too – and that’s gender equality for you).
This reply betrays a complete and utter failure to understand basic discourse and the presentation of evidence to back up claims. Anshu had said no more than that they disagree, and had not made a claim that warrants evidence.
You might think this a simple twitter wording gone astray, except that RadFem is a writer herself, and makes a splash of it in her Twitter bio – ‘bon mots’.
Nevertheless, Anshu clarifies his disagreement, which is the same point, put in other words:
But you just did, you moron! You specifically analysed the hypotheitical of the judge being a man in this case and asserted this conversation would not be happening.
Well, on second thoughts, to be fair, that’s probably true. But the reason would be (engaging my own hypotheticals) that the RadFem would not have bothered to pick up the evidence against her RadFem agenda.
And that’s the bias of RadFem for you. And, just to make sure it’s clear, Kenan responds at this point:
Oh, FFS! She really has no idea who Kenan Malik is, or she’d not be making dumb ass statements like this. But not only that, the judge is white, the abuser is white, … and he wasn’t even racist in his choice of victims. He’s an equal opportunity abuser.
This RadFem nonsense is off the rails at this point.
The profile of the RadFem @vonny_bravo:
Journalist. RadFem. Martinis, bon mots, good shoes. Writes about women & girls. @ScotNational columnist. @Guardian contributor.
We can only hope for more rationality and use of evidence in articles that aren’t as agenda driven. So, to Vonny’s article:
“Larry Nassar will die in jail. Following arguably the biggest child abuse scandal in sporting history …”
So, Vonny hasn’t heard of the UK football abuse scandals? “Writes about women & girls” – OK, maybe that’s a hint to broaden one’s horizons.
“In reporting it, too often the victim is an afterthought. The perpetrator profile, the act detailed, the woman or girl nowhere to be seen.”
I wonder if that’s because their identity is specifically protected. This was once a problem for women victims, but now this has become a problem for the falsely accused, as the recent Liam Allan, where even the police and prosecution stacked the cards against him by withholding evidence that should have seen the case thrown out long before his name became public.
And, of course, despite Vonny’s pleading, as shown in the Liam Allen case, details about the accuser are not without pertinance to the case.
“When we hear her name, it’s when a case collapses and the tabloids feast.”
Collapse? How about when they are shown to be based on lies, smears, false accusations? What about when the lying accuser at last gets some publicity? Does Vonny oppose this too?
“More often, we hear nothing unless a woman waives her right to anonymity”
So, what exactly is the complaint here? That women victims get publicity, or they don’t? Do note that the football coaching abuse scandal has male victims waving anonymity.
“She sentenced him to 175 years. A titan of a sentence, the fullest force of the law – but just one year and one month per girl when you do the maths.”
What’s she proposing? 1,750 years? 3,500 years? What point is Vonny making with the “one year and one month per girl”?
“You would think denouncing a serial paedophile would be a given in a civilised society. There’s no ambiguity about the atrocity of child abuse. And yet countless men took to the internet denounce everyone but Nassar. The girls were looking for money and attention. Aquilina was grandstanding. She was mean. The sentence was too harsh. She wears too much makeup. Where were their mothers?”
Maybe “countless *men* (no women?) took to the internet denounce everyone but Nassar” because Nassar was already denounced. Did anyone actually claim he was not guilty? After all, if there was no ambiguity.
Maybe some were curious about how he got away with it for so long. Who else was culpable – not of abuse, but of a failure of a duty of care to watch out for the girls.
Comments about the judge’s makeup were irrelevant to the case. Who exactly used that as a reason to claim Nassar’s innocence? I ask, because you can see what ‘journalist’ Vonny is doing here. She’s using spurious comments, by who knows, to form a case for the new hip term ‘himpathy’.
“Professor Kate Manne, a moral philosopher at Cornell, theorises this as “himpathy”.”
So, women don’t engage in excusing women? And when it comes to excusing men, there are an awful lot of female Trump supporters, and all the serious bad guys, like Hitler, Moa, Castro, all had their female apologists. Of course you’d expect more men and fewer women to excuse a man charged with abuse. What woman could possibly excuse him? Well, you could ask that of many religious women that seem to idolise male prophets and preachers.
“Himpathy blinkers us.”
This, in a post that was offered as response to Kenan Malik’s article on distinguishing justice and revenge, where zero support, sympathy of excuse was offered to the abuser, and not a hint of victim blaming. Blinkered is what Vonny is.
If you let your ideology overcome your capacity to reason, and it prevents you simply admitting you were mistaken when accusing a particular person of something they didn’t do, and if you find you are doubling, trebling down on your position, or diverting from it entirely, then maybe you need to take some philosophy classes.
So, an atheist kills a bunch of religious people, and the religious can now cite an example that shows that their religion isn’t that bad after all.
Not so fast.
Atheism vs Theism
Both Atheism and Theism are simply opposing philosophical positions. Any other system’s metaphysical philosophy is ‘atheistic’ if it rejects theism.
A particular theism might be vary vague – “I believe there is one, and possibly more gods, but I don’t know whether any of the religions are true …”.
Or it might be specific yet still ‘other worldly’ – “I believe that there must have been a creator god, but I have no idea what he intends for us, and I offer no moral guidance based on my belief that there is a god.”
Or it might be committed to the variable claims about the god or gods of a particular religion, which may have many sects.
Atheism is pretty much opposition to these sorts of theism, usually on the grounds that there is no evidence or reason to believe specific claims, or support the level of hopefulness that the ‘spiritual’ seem to be clinging onto. In this respect Atheism is a negative position: it simply rejects the claim that there are gods.
Note that Atheism does not assert that there are definitely no gods.
Some atheists might assert that there are absolutely no gods, but that isn’t much better than asserting absolutely that there are gods. You might call such an atheism a ‘faith’ based atheism. But if you take the trouble to pin atheists down they generally agree that they do not hold such a strong opinion, but merely act as if they do because that’s often easier to express.
But this acting as if there are no gods is a fair position to take. Christians act as if there are no Norse gods. They act as if there are no fairies or Santa. (Note that playing along with such fantasies for the fun they provide for children isn’t acting with true belief.)
Religions
Religions are a subset of Theism …
[Agnostics may not deny the existence of god, but they don’t positively assert there are gods either.]
Religions take the basic philosophical position of theism, thinking there are some teleological entities that created our universe, and add many more specific claims:
Our god is the only god.
Our god cares about us.
Our god dictates our moral codes.
Our god wants us to punish people that don’t follow his codes.
Our god wants us to punish people that don’t believe in him.
Our god doesn’t want us to eat pig meat and thinks it a moral obligation that we don’t.
Our god wants us to punish people that have sex outside the specific type of union sanctioned by our god (monogamy for Christians, up to four wives, but one husband for Muslims)
Our god will not remarry divorcees – old school Catholic; god changes his mind sometimes; he’s fickle; or humans decide he changed his mind.
Most religious people are born into, indoctrinated into, their religion. And the religion may provide many social benefits if it’s a large religious community.
But there can also be great costs for those that simply cannot continue to believe. In some more fundamentalist communities, ex-believers can be ostracised, might suffer social and economic hardship if rejected by the community, and might even risk death. If the religion prescribes death for apostates, as is the case for Islam, then even if the religion isn’t the state authority, believers are easily persuaded to take it upon themselves.
The list of additional beliefs on top of basic theism, including the many moral prescriptions and proscriptions, is long. It depends on the religion, the sect within the religion, and the personal willingness of individuals to follow the rules of the religion.
This becomes a little tricky for the religious that try to divert criticism away from their religion, when opinions differ so widely within:
God changes his mind often, it seems, judging by how religious opinions change.
Individuals make up their own minds what they take from their religion … you’d think the religious would therefore appreciate how atheists make up their own minds about morality.
The greatest opponents to a particular religious believer’s views are … other religious people. Islamic terrorism? Many victims are other Muslims, for being the wrong type of Muslim.
The variety of religious belief is often greater than the difference between Atheism and a particular Religion. Modern Anglicans that accept secular liberal democracy, have no problem with homosexuality, even in the church, are for full gender equality, and gender identity. They have much more in common with the social and political leanings of many atheists, than with even their fundamentalist Christian brethren, let alone than with people of other faiths.
And yet, the religious stick together. It only takes the whiff of an atheist with a strong opinion for the ‘interfaith’ community to band together in offended outrage. And let anyone speak out about the Islam of the Islamic extremists and even moderate Muslims will come to Islam’s defence as much as agree with an atheist that there might be a problem with the religion.
[Update 5/12/2017] There was greater outrage that Trump retweeted a lead figure one of Britain First’s outspoken anti-Islam activists than at the content of the videos the activist posted. One was ‘fake news’, but the other two were of Muslims persecuting others. Despite the acts of the Muslims, this was actually seen as anti-Muslim bigotry. Take a moment. Here’s the upshot: every tweet condemning German neo-Nazis is anti-German bigotry; every tweet showing and condemning videos of Britain First are anti-British bigotry, and by extension, anti-Muslim bigotry, since, as is belaboured painfully, British Muslims are British. This is the state of play in 2017, where any criticism of Islam is interpreted as ‘Islamophobia’, ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ … and yes, ‘racism’.
Political Ideologies of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, …
Whenever an atheist argues with Christians or Muslims, it’s not long before we get the Hitler, Stalin, Fascism, Nazism, Communism line thrown at us. And no matter how often it’s pointed out that this isn’t a valid argument, it still keeps on coming up. Often from the same people that have had this pointed out before.
Political ideologies can of course cross boundaries of Atheism-Theism. Christians can be socialists. In the 70s it was quite common for Islamists to lean towards socialism … maybe they hadn’t realised how far right Islam really is … or maybe they had.
And, Hitler was not an atheist. He might not have favoured the established churches that opposed his thugs, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t religious. Many Nazi ideas were based on the old Teutonic ideals of religiously motivated knights.
Communism? Don’t think that political ideology stops you believing in a personal god … it just becomes less convenient and maybe a little dangerous to admit to one, but Communism does not preclude theism.
These political ideologies tell us little about the wide variety of atheists. The Atheism that some political ideologies might embrace informs the ideology with nothing other than the fact that there is no evidence for any god.
Religious Political Ideologies
Some political ideologies are religious ones.
And most religious ideologies are political – they are inherently so because they dictate the behaviours of people, and that’s a very political thing to do. And they usually have a lot to say on social issues … not all good. Homophobia, sex outside marriage, modesty, … religions can be obsessed with sex, particularly with regard to women, and if feminism isn’t a political matter I’m not sure what is.
It is possible to believe in a religion and treat it as an entirely personal belief system that determines how you live your own life, without you making any claims about what it implies for anyone else.
But this is rare. Most religions, and especially religious organisations, are very keen on telling: religious believers how they should act; non-believers that they are anything from misguided to evil; the religious what they should do to the non-believers: killing apostates, bombing abortion clinics, punishing people for blasphemy (the modern version is imprisoning people for ‘hate speech’).
Christianity, as supposedly expressed by Jesus, is a “render unto Caesar” kind of religion – a reasonable basis of separation of church and state. However, the Catholic church in Rome put a swift stop to that. Christianity, especially through many bishops and popes, made state business very much church business. The US continues this tradition by distorting the intentions of the founding fathers and making it the godly nation the founding fathers tried to avoid – they’d seen enough of that in Europe.
Islam is very specifically, inherently, by design, a political ideology. Only Muslims can hold certain offices of state. Muslims and non-Muslims are taxed differently.
Many Muslims will try to pull a fast one by telling you that Islam insists that Muslims follow the laws of the the land in which they find themselves … where Muslims are a minority that does not hold power. But Islam also requires Muslims to spread Islam … which means it would eventually become a majority. This is why many opponents of Islam also oppose too much immigration from Muslim countries.
Of course many Muslims don’t want a dominant Islam any more than non-Muslims do. Many escape the domination of Islam of their homelands, and are quite happy to live in secular democracies where they can practice their religion in peace.
But then we also see a lot of duplicitous language from supposedly ‘moderate’ Muslims that think homosexuality should be illegal, and make excuses for their more extreme brothers and sisters (“Nothing to do with Islam”).
In Europe the atheists and secularists have been opposing the power of the church for centuries, letting the humanistic principles take precedence. There’s still plenty of religious protectionism that goes on – a refusal to give up the reigns of power, as diminished as they are. Why the heck do Bishops get seats in the UK House of Lords – and why is there even such an unelected house still?
But I’ve seen and heard much more of the stranglehold religion has in some parts of the US, where the mark of a good plumber is whether he’s a good Christian or not. “In God We Trust” – indeed they do.
So, religions are political, and as such are as fair game for criticism and ridicule as any non-religious political ideology.
And being offended when religions are criticised is just one more political tool the religious try to pull. It may be a genuine feeling, and so they try to give it moral weight. Hence, critics of Islam are labelled haters of Muslims.
But, realising that atheists tend not to be impressed by the special pleading for the religion, that atheists aren’t taken in by the piety, the hurt feelings, what are the religious to do? Compare their religion to atheism? They can’t. They are not comparable.
Humanism
So, religious friends, you can’t really compare Atheism with your religion.
You can compare Atheism with Theism, if you’re talking only about the philosophy, reason, evidence, to support either case.
But you can’t compare Atheism as such with Christianity or Islam. Yes, I know that atheists argue against Christianity and Islam, but they do so on two quite separate grounds:
1 – A disagreement with the underlying theistic claims of your religion. If your religion relies on a claim that there is one or more gods, and there isn’t, then 2 is irrelevant. But, we humour you anyway and so …
2 – A disagreement with the moral assertions that you think your imaginary god has prescribed. It’s not like we disagree with all your moral positions, we just hold those we agree on for different reasons, for which we don’t need an imaginary god. But those Humanist atheists also find many of the moral guides of religion to be immoral, barbaric at times, and remnants of ancient codes of conduct prescribed at the time of the religion’s inception.
The thing is, Atheism prescribes no moral position whatsoever. It really is merely the rejection of your unsubstantiated claims about your god.
And this, of course, leads to another failure to understand atheism: “Atheists have no morals. They are nihilists.” Not so.
We have morals. We just don’t think some imaginary friend dictates them; and we very specifically reject many of the immoral codes that gods supposedly do dictate.
But you’re nearly right. it’s not our atheism that determines our morals, it’s something else.
Many atheists find other reasons for their morality – many simply acknowledging that harming others isn’t nice. People and animals don’t like to suffer harm, so we prefer to minimise that. It seems a very simple idea, but it’s amazing how far you can go with just that basic starting point. And it also avoids the need to punish people for daft reasons – such as for having sex outside marriage, for not being heterosexual, for drinking, for working on the Sabbath.
[In the UK the Shops Bill 1986 was defeated; the Sunday Trading Act 1994 eventually introduced limited Sunday trading … so strong was Christianity’s hold over British life. Now we’re finding we have to start again, with Islam.]
Many atheists want to live by their own moral ideals, and many collect these ideas about living a moral life into a set of codes. It’s not that these codes are necessary, but they are helpful in declaring some minimal set of behaviours we agree to abide by.
And one example of such a guide is the Humanist Manifesto. Take a look at it. You’ll find no diktats about women being lesser than men, or how to deal with the evil of homosexuality, or what the best way is to kill apostates. Humanists don’t have to look for ‘nuance’ and ‘scholarship’ to explain away inconvenient passages ‘revealed’ through some desert warlord or hippy.
So, if you want to carry out any comparisons I’d suggest you try these:
– Atheism vs Theism
– Humansim vs Christianity, Islam, …
You might find that many atheists tell you they don’t belong to any Humanist organisation, because they would rather not belong to any group that sets their ethical standards for them, as they can figure it out for themselves. They have a point. We are free to decide our own moral codes, and put them to the test in our societies.
My personal subscription to Humanism is one of convenience, and support for many of the programs of Humanists UK (formerly British Humanist Association).
Other atheists might join other groups of common interest, such as the many secular and skeptical societies around the world. Ex-Muslims have a shared experience that brings them together in various groups – often with the added benefit of providing a safe community to those ex-Muslims that are still at risk from their families.
Let that sink in, and imagine a child of Humanists being ostracised, forced into marriage, threatened with death, killed. I don’t know of any such incident. Has one ever made the news?
The next time you’re arguing with atheists on Twitter, they are unlikely to be Nazis. So when you pull the “What about Hitler, Stalin ..” it’s a Straw Man. If you want to argue for your religion, why don’t you try coming up with good reasons for it, not excusing the bad stuff by dragging in some irrelevant comparison.
And for pities sake, give up on trying to defend the indefensible. Your religious texts are full of ancient stuff that really doesn’t stand up to our moral standards today. Some religious passages are outright contraventions of the human rights that most people would want to sign up to. Stop defending that crap with ‘nuance’ and ‘scholarship’ – it makes you look like damned fools that are fooling no one but themselves.
Atheist Terrorists
And that atheist killer you want to call a terrorist because you’re sick of hearing about Islamic terrorists? Could be they are genuinely crazy, or have some motive other than their hate for religion.
And even if they carried out the heinous act because they hate religion and religious believers, there’s no Atheist Bible, and nothing in the Humanist Manifesto to suggest they should … unlike your religious books. Not even The God Delusion, Letter to a Christian Nation, or any of the New Atheist books.
If some killers that are atheists really are killing for atheism, there’s nothing in atheism, or Humanism, that can be removed that would stop them. There are no doctrines we can reject. There’s no “Believers are children of Satan” sermons going on. Pointing out the problems with religion doesn’t automatically create Atheist Killers. Sadly it does all too often create killers of atheists.
But, hey, if someone has a terrorist agenda, against believers, for atheism, then pretty much all humanist atheists will oppose them. I’ll happily denounce any such terrorists. But I won’t be able to point to any atheist texts that has incited them. I can only point to Humanist texts that are very short and very explicit in their opposition to doing harm. There is no Humanist Prophet whose example I should follow that includes his beheading of enemies.
The Humanist Manifesto is so clear in rejecting doing harm to others there’s no way you can mistakenly or otherwise derive some crazy idea that it’s a good idea to kill believers.
This cannot be said of the books of Christianity and Islam. Alongside all the lovely stuff is some seriously dark and immoral doctrine.
Look, if you want to call some atheist killer an atheist terrorist, knock yourself out. Any disagreement from atheists will be on a technicality, not for some fear of having to explain away our inconvenient texts. Let me help you out with A Guide To Terrorists For Idiots.
NO. IT. DOES. NOT. It mocks Nazis [and, as I too missed, on first writing, it mocks some of the liberal commentary on how deserving conservative Texan’s might be, which I hadn’t seen – see Areo link later]
It is not mocking all victims of Harvey. It is not claiming all victims of Harvey are Nazis.
Idiots are doing 2 + 2 = 5 again. Reading their own interpretation into a simplistic view of Hebdo.
Hebdo is anti-Nazi.
Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is a neo-Nazi organisation.
Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Kla is present in Texas.
Hammerskins were formed in Texas.
Resistance Records is headquartered in Texas.
Now, you might want to bear in mind that this next link is based on the notoriously dodgy SPLC, but according to them there are about 55 ‘hate groups’ in Texas – and even allowing for SPLC bias and lies, that would still likely leave a few.
About the only real complaint one could make about the Hebdo piece is “Too soon!” But topicality, satire, irreverance, is their thing.
A question: Is Hebdo’s message any worse than the many religious people in Texas thanking God for their survival, while ignoring their imaginary friend’s failure to protect Texas from the storm? Or that Texans deserve the ‘biblical’ flood?
Anyway, even if ‘tasteless’ is an appropriate description, the typical hysteria around Hebdo, which is based on past misrepresentations that have created this image of Hebdo the Haters, is misplaced.
Ramblings 