Talking about Islamophobia

TGF UKIP

"Talking about Islamaphobia" but very carefully not talking about Greedy Gideon notwithstanding your very own Andrew Neil's key role in the story.

Ted Tedford

Mr Oborne is a mildly hysterical polemicist, and articles like this do his cause no good. Most commentators make precisely the distinction between Islam and Islamism that James makes. Islam has for years been almost uniquely privileged in British public life, with the legitimate debate about the limits of accommodation made harder by the routine cries of 'Islamophobia' and parallels with anti-Semitism that Mr Oborne perpetuates. That might explain the apparent rise in anti-Islamic stories.

He also apparently confuses religion and race: people choose (usually) to be Muslim - though they are often much less free to renounce that decision.

By the way, I see the advance blurb for episode one of the BBC's *Bonekickers* features a right-wing Christian group. Wouldn't you know it? Those pesky Christian extremists...

Tom Ellis

Intolerance is a serious problem especially amongst younger, more impressionable people.

Some NGOs have begun to address this such as Tolerance International. They seek to promote tolerance and moderation between peoples, society and nature for the equal benefit of all and for future generations.

Chris

'Islamophobia' is a new 'boo' word which is wheeled out to shut down debates. It will do more harm than good. Peter Oborne is on the wrong side of this debate.

I may tolerate islam - but I do not respect it - full of anti gay, anti female, anti semitic and indeed anti human hatred as it is.

Until muslims are amenable to criticism of their belief system (and it needs critcism) they will continue to marginalise themselves.

This country has suffered under religious zealots and bigots and their courts and sectarianism - we've already had what islam would propose. We do not want it again. Most of us are determined that it will never happen again. Those who propose that it does had better get out of the way.

Chuck Unsworth

Who would confuse Christianity with Christians?

It's just as stupid to confuse Islam with Muslims.

One is a faith, the other the practitioner. You get nutters everywhere. Maybe the question should be whether Islam engenders more crazies and extremists than any other religion.

cuffleyburgers

They could do themselves some favours by not living in ghettos and making more of an effort to integrate as well as to condemn extremism and especially terrorism, they could preach that their duty as good muslims is to report to the police any information they may have about extremist activity, and one way for young muslims to help their society is to join the police themselves.

Once they start making these steps they might suddenly find people a little more prepared to accept them with open arms.

Chris

Chuck - this belief system is one of conquest and subjugation. Tibet has been under the jackboot for over 50 years, with horrendous communist suppression. Tibetans may believe some fairly odd things - but where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? How many other 'faiths' issue death sentences on cartoonists or authors? In how many other faiths is apostasy punishable by death? Islam is not just A.N.other 'faith'.

Charles

"26 percent see Islam and British values as incompatible"

And those were 'British' values, which seem to be whatever one wants them to be.

Imagine if the questioning had been about 'English' values (a more robust concept, in my view) - what likely percentage them? 70%, 80%, 90% or higher?

Alf Tupper

We should not be worried about the Rottweiller, it's his teeth which are the problem.

London Calling

I agree with you on this one James,Peter is right to debate the aftermath of 7/7 and the division it has caused for Muslims in The UK, but I Think the time has come to debate peaceful Islam vs. extreme Islam as I believe this is the root cause of mistrust by non Muslims, that not enough moderate Muslims are speaking out and condemning acts of violence or Jihad.

Peter is only presenting one side of the story, but it doesn’t go far enough in my view.

Hopefully this will soon change, because we cannot risk being silent whilst hatred is preached
and young Muslim minds continue to be brainwashed on British soil by British citizens or others.

Frank Pulley

We did this last week - and on Melanie's page, too. Why are you still wringing your hands, James.

Oborne is, as Ted says above, a polemical prat. What's he trying to do elevate himself to the status of the Archdhimmi and the LCJ who besmirches the name of Phillips? Or perhaps I should say descend to their level of naivity and waffling. We are at war and it is against Islam as a predatory proselytising creed of hatred as interpreted by an ancient nutter called Mo. It's adherents want to have their way with us, both territorially and ideologically. Please stop using this Magazine as a bed to sleep with the enemy. I expect it from Ch.4. which is why I refuse to watch it, but not from the Speccie. I do not want one penny of my subscription to be be diverted to propaganda on behalf of an inimical, radical, militant pseudo-religious cult that wishes to annihilate Jews and randomly blow the rest of us up and/or out-breed us in our own land.

Chuck Unsworth

OK Chris, so is Communism a 'belief system', then? And for that matter, what's a 'belief system' anyway? Let's not conflate politics and religion.

What you're saying - I think - is that a 'Faith' issues fatwas etc. I'd suggest that it is not the 'Faith' but the practitioner who does so. Whether that is allowed or encouraged under Muslim Law is quite another discussion.

Then there is the (current) debate as to whether such laws should take precedence over the laws of (this) country.

As I see it, your position is that that should not be so. That's a reasonable democratic stance. Why not simply debate from that position?

Ian C

The problem is that what we regard as moderate Islam hardly exists across the board in many Muslims. Such a Mulsim might agree that kfiir killing etc is bad but that women are 'owned' (My abbreviation for the actual situation) by their men.

So to find that we can do business with someone who will actively call for no suicide bombings and more simply moves us along to the next problem of getting the same people to behave, in other respects in their Mulsim world, in what we regard as an acceptably civilised way.

There is no easy route to find enough, all-round acceptable, 'moderate muslims'.

John

Frank, quite so. But Al Beeb far exceeds C4 in sleeping with the enemy. Indeed, it has become its mouthpiece and ho.

Cuck: Yes, communism is a belief system. It is much more like a religion than it is like a rational political system.

John

"Such a Mulsim might agree that kfiir killing etc is bad"

Yes, and often it's only bad because it is counterproductive to the great cause, not because it's morally wrong.

Munir

Some of the sheer bigotry and ignorance on here is astonishing. Muslims believe women should be owned? Have you ever spoken to a Muslim ? Islam wants to exterminate the Jews? Makes you wonder why te Jews sought refuge in Muslim lands for 1400 years and why there are any Mizrahi Jews left at all.

Muslim scholars have repeated condemned terrorism, called on Muslims to assist against terrorism and indeed help the police. But bigots are deaf to all but their own demons.

Frank Pulley

Munir

Some of the 'bigots' may be deaf because of all the loud bangs on the London Underground three years ago today, or a bus or two and an airport hither and thither, not to mention Boeing guided missiles driven by insane suicidal Muslims into very large 'Amerikkkan dens of iniquity'; or even from the stentorious ranting of alien rabid Muslim clerics spewing hatred in their adopted country to the detriment of its indigenous subjects. F**k off with your sanctimonious defence of a militant religion out of control and on the march - with hardware supplied by the mad mullahs of Iran. We ain't buying it on this blog - or most of us aren't anyway. Even though some of our hosts seem to have been sold a bill of goods. It's a bad day for punting excuses for Islam, remember the date.

Michael Sweeney

I think some of these contributors should watch the programme. Bogus press stories, the arson attack on a Basildon mosque, a segment presenting headlines with Jew in place of Muslim (which become astonishingly offensive - Pollard and Phillips would be outraged). Oborne is doing no more than defend the British sense of fair play. He should be encouraged.

Michael Sweeney

Frank Pulley: If you are representative of this blog, then it is home to the nastier element of the nasty party. Read some Rumi, or visit the Alhambra. Or remain a bigot. Somehow I think you would prefer the latter.

John

"Muslim scholars have repeated condemned terrorism, called on Muslims to assist against terrorism and indeed help the police"

And the chief Iranian Muslim scholars repeatedly call on the world to admire Israel and support her, right? One wonders whether you realy think we are so stupid that we'll swallow your fairytales.

More fairytales: the Jews have never had it so good as in Islamic countries, and they have never been second-class citizens there, and women have equal legal rights in strict Moslem countries as men, and so do non-Moslems.

Michael is no better. A building in Spain, however pretty, is no excuse for mass murders carried out today. Unless you are a bigot, of course.

Bulldogbreed

Michael Sweeney, Frank Pulley is definitely not a bigot. Your response is indicative of the problem we face today of decent people like yourself being unwilling to believe the reality of what Islam really is. Note I say Islam and not muslims. I'm sure many of us know nice muslims. Instead of condemning Frank Pulley can I ask you to consider why he holds the views you find offensive. Do you honestly know why? You will find through research and through the pages of the koran itself why he is right to condemn Islam as an evil ideology and why we should all be concerned about it. Believe anything you like and good luck to you so long as it harms nobody. However, the predatory expansion of Islam across 1400 hundred years is responsible for the deaths of around 270 million non-muslims. Read Robert Spencer and look in the koran too. Know this too that for a true muslim the words in the koran are as valid today as when they were spoken by Mohammed 1400 years ago. This is why 'moderate' muslims do not throng the streets in condemnation of islamic extremists. They can't because what extremists do is mandated by the koran itself. Please do the research. I promise you'll find it most illuminating.

Chuck Unsworth

John,

What is a 'belief system'?

As to Communism, nobody seriously believed in it after the Russian Revolution. It became a way of survival under the successive tyrants, that's all...

And I seriously doubt that any political system is rational. Name one.

Michael Sweeney

There shouldn't be an excuse for mass murder carried out today or any other day. Would you say the Ku Klux Klan is representative of Protestantism, the C of E was responsible for the slave trade? If you did, at least it would be consistent with you views about Islam.

Chris

Chuck - I don't conflate politics and religion but islam most certainly does. If you read the Koran and the hadiths it's crystal clear. Theocracy is the number one islamic goal.

I don't believe that any real debate is needed about elements of hate filled sharia law being adopted in this country. Would we adopt elements of the Nuremberg Laws of 1933?

Wake up Chuck.

TDK

In an earlier program in the Dispatches series we saw a series of imams giving hate speeches. Was this supposedly Islamophobic society's first action to investigate the hate preachers or was it to accuse the program makers of taking words out of context (a charge later found to be utterly without merit)? ie to accuse Dispatches of Islamophobia.

Anyone who knows the answer will understand that far from being Islamophobic, we as a society bend over backwards to be tolerant to the intolerant.

There are undoubtedly some bogus stories about Muslims, which should be and are criticised, but to pretend that such are the norm is wicked. If Peter Oborne wants to understand why British Muslims feel alienated then he ought to ask whether people like him enable such paranoia. Do they put things in context or do they blow them up out of proportion?

Max Kaye

Is a phobia a rational or an irrational fear.

If it is the former, then I am an Islamophobe.

Frank Pulley

Michael Sweeney

"The British sense of fair play." Ah yes!

It's not county cricket, old boy! It's jihad!

I can imagine you and Oborne as the bombs rained down on the East End in '40-'41:

"This is a bad show, Peter, but it's not those nice moderate Bavarians that we met on holiday in Obergammerau, it's that chap Hitler. he's a bad lot. We can't blame them all."

"No indeedy, Michael dear boy, we must keep a sense of perspective and proportion. I sometimes think you Irish chappies have the right idea; we should have stayed neutral. This little spat will soon pass over and reason will prevail. I don't want to miss my cruise up the Rhine next year, I've been looking forward to it."

Once again I hear the spinning bodies in well tended graves all over the European continent. I also hear ethereal whispers - "Why did we bother? All that we sacrificed ourselves for they have squandered or destroyed."

Lest we forget ...

What a bleeding joke! Literally.

Fergus Pickering

Munir, of course Muslims think women are owned. Think of what they (you) DO, not what they say. And as for extermination - of Jews or anybody - doesn't a Muslim want to bring about universal Islam? How? Through the power of argument? Islam is a religion of the sword is it not? I do not think it will prevail because of the twin pillars of the West, technology and consumerism, which saw off the Marxists. But since I, an aeffete Westerner, do not like Muslim values, no, not any of them, you cannot expect me to like it nor to welcome to my country, my country, people who wish to overthrow the rule of lasw, mylaw, and put another law in its place. Isn't that what they (you) wish to do, or have I been listening to the wrong holy men? Who are he right ones, then?

Verity

Thank you, Frank Pulley.

Jack R

James Forsyth:

..."what we should be worried about is not Muslims but Islamism."

NO, what we should be worried about is ISLAM.

John

"As to Communism, nobody seriously believed in it after the Russian Revolution"

Really? The first name that popped into my head was Hobsbawm, who believed in it with religious zeal (sic) even after Hungary 1956. Ditto, many thousands of other useful idiots. And since I have relatives in the former Communist bloc, I assure you that you are wrong in stating that nobody there believed in it. That's simly not factually true.

Communism shares virtually all hallmarks of religions (which utilitarianism does not, as an fr'instance; and it's not alone there): boundless devotion to an all-knowing leader who has a direct line to the eternal truths; messianic zeal and a belief in salvation through devotion to the only truth; indifference to the fate of those who deny the true faith, let alone fight it; etc. The list goes on. The same goes for Nazism.

John

Michael S.: false analogy. 99% of Potestants today do not believe that every last word in the Bible is literally true.

You cannot make the same argument about Muslims.

And again: how many bombs have KKK exploded in the last year? 5 years? 20 years?

John

Excellent, Frank P.
And Jack R.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Chris

"Would we adopt elements of the Nuremberg Laws of 1933?"

What makes you believe that we haven't already done so? Take a look at the discriminatory laws already passed and the utterings of people like Harman.

Chuck Unsworth

@ John

I'd accept your comment about Hobsbawn - gullible and laughable idiot that he was. Note my qualifier - 'seriously'.

Have you personally spent much time inside communist regimes? In my experience, people are much more sophisticated and intelligent than you appear to believe.

Your catalogue of similarities does not prove the point. There remain substantial differences.

Michael Sweeney

Frank - I'm not Irish. I wasn't around in '40-41 either, though I've been led to believe bombings were more prevalent then than they are today. My father fought during WWII in Eqypt - he loved the country and it's people. I'd guess he'd hate the terrorists but still be fond of Islamic culture if he were around - just as he hated the Stern gang who tried to blow him and his mates up in Palestine, but retained many Jewish friends. He had a sense of perspective.