What Am I Supposed to Say About This?

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

I take it by 'speechless' that you're shocked.

I can't believe you have lived in the UK up to now and not heard this kind of talk before. And this is not radicalism, this mindset is very widespread.

You need to listen more intently to what goes on in the street.

This is not a horrible dream, it's just horrible, and can only get worse in a society which beats itself up because it hasn't elevated enough people like this into positions of power and influence.

Hawkeye

What did you expect? Religion teaches division and separateness, that "we" are chosen and "they" are not. It's not just Islam. Christianity and Judaism have similar themes.

You'll learn eventually.

Crystal Bullet

The 1960s was a period when the “dialectics of liberation” was a common currency. R.D. Laing in “The Bird of Paradise” says "If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you, I would let you know." As in America, the left-wing of today is the aged product of this period. That is to say the existentialist period over which Sartre, Laing and others presided is frozen in time and subsequent liberties (sexual and racial equality) are built on this foundation of agnosticism without revisiting the core experience of the times. If your removed the words Quran, Islam and Allah from the transcript it could quite easily belong to that period.

The question the left should be asking itself is: To what extent has modern psychiatry turned the western mind into a failed state? I personally do not think the British left can ask that because New Labour is built so precisely on top of the Thatcherism and the biological model of mental illness. “Until its publication [Psychiatry in Dissent by Professor Anthony Clare] in 1976, orthodox psychiatry had not known how to respond to the attacks of the anti-psychiatrists, R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, oscillating between trying to ignore them and alternately exploding with incoherent rage” (Psychiatric Bulletin (2008) 32: 118-119).

The British right may soon have to face the challenge because the cost of the welfare state supporting millions of medicated community care patients is a big economic burden on taxpayers. It is not the place of Christianity nor atheists to respond to the type of dialectic this transcript reveals, but their opposite number. That is why the “legal-pharmaceutical-medical conspiracy” Laing coined is not under serious attack from those beneath its yoke, but from a quarter that has been left free to prosper while their natural predators are held in check. Add to that the unearned wealth from oil revenues that have streamed into feudal-like Islamic states and you have the disastrous collision course.

Fearless Frank

Some context needed here, please.

In the few words quoted in the transcript and on the video, it's not at all clear that he is endorsing the views he describes.
From all we have to go on, he could have preceded it with something like "This is the kind of poison that Islam must rid itself of."

I take it you checked this out before you became speechless...

magneto

Hawkeye - I agree that the other two 'Abrahamic' religions have similar messages - however they tend not to stone women to death, publicly hang gays, behead helpless hostages on camera, or fly planeloads of innocent civilians into tower blocks full of innocent civilians.

pedant2007

The Good Samaritan? The centurion?

cuffleyburgers

Well it's hardly any more stupid than believing in socialism or that any govenrment not least one led by a useless deluded lying autistic moron as Gordon Brown to solve anything.

Frankly anyone expecting sense from a magazine of the "quality" of the New Statesman is going to remain sad and bitter.

I hope that in your move from there to the Speccie that you will realize that the debate on the right side of the argument is not about how to keep the masses in their place, or the best way to hang your ermine so that your valet can brush it - you will have seen that the debate is very often about how to deliver health and education to the inhabitants of the shit holes that have remained shitholes despite (? or perhaps because of) x years of socialist administration and frequently lamenting Brown's policies not because of the cost (at least not only because of the cost) but because they will be ineffective and divisive in practice.

And that is what we have seen since 1997.

Expensive, ineffective and frequently divisive and counterproductive policies, an avalanche of them, and the outcome has been without a shadow of a doubt to worsen the quality of life for every single person in this country except possibly T Blair and F Goodwin.

RIP Labour, quick someone get a stake to hammer through its Black Heart.

Corsair

So, you're a leftist, and the Left simply won't accept that our society is rotting and decadent until the filth starts lapping around it's own ankles - if even then. And why is it rotten and decadent? Well, the left doesn't want to go there, does it?

The political editor of a left-wing magazine is committed to a violent, anti-Western, millenarian and apocalyptic world-view: whooda thunkit?

Arthur

Well, you're supposed to stand up and say that he's wrong. That these kind of attitudes have no place in our society. Can you do that?

Morus

Martin - I'm trying to be generous here, but is it possible that this is a Regensburg Quote.

The Pope wasn't agreeing with emperor Manual II Palaiologos, he was simply quoting him that Islam was a religion of the sword. Might this be the same?

Maybe Mr Hasan was simply using what the Qu'ran says as a starting position, before giving a lecture about how it could be interpreted differently.

I recognise this is hoping beyond hope, but I'd hate to think the man was a bigot without confirmation that he stands by what was said in that clip.

Do you know him well-enough to call him and get a response?

Suki

Speechless?

You hang out in these circles (presumably in London?) and you've never heard talk like this in Left wing circles?

Get your ears cleaned out.

Brett

Fearless Frank syas: "he could have preceded it with something like 'This is the kind of poison that Islam must rid itself of.'"

He could have, but he doesn't. The Harry's Place article links to the full speech.

Jack R

But Martin Bright, you surely must go beyond 'speechless'?

The Left-Islamic dogmatic alliance is well entrenched, and surely needs to be continually challenged and opposed?

You saw through Ken Livingstone's politics, but now you surely need to develop a broader critique?

M.A.Khan's new book, 'Islamic Jihad' may be a very useful starting point; in the Preface he describes his intellectual journey from Islam supporter, to Islam opponent.

Paul Evans

Corsair - "our society is rotting and decadent until the filth starts lapping around it's own ankles"

Funny, I think I've heard that kind of talk somewhere else...

Hawkeye

@magneto - The other Abrahamic religions have already been through the sort of phase that islam is going through right now. The islamic year is about 1430AH. In 1430AD we were burning heretics, slaughtering apostates and killing old women (witches) in droves. The women of the time were not allowed to mix with men and had to cover their head.

In short, islam needs to grow up. Give it another 600 years like christianity and they will probably be like we are now.

--

Cuffleyburgers said: "... the debate on the right side of the argument is not about how to keep the masses in their place ... [it] is very often about how to deliver health and education to the inhabitants of the shit holes that have remained shitholes despite (? or perhaps because of) x years of socialist administration and frequently lamenting Brown's policies ... because they will be ineffective and divisive in practice."

Well said.

The underlying socialist lie is that anyone on the right must be fascist whilst anyone on the left is enlightened. However not everyone on the right is kind, gentle and decent. We have our share of nutters as well just like on the left.

I would be interested to know how his time here has changed Martin's viewpoint - if at all. Perhaps he could write a 1st anniversary article on it when that time arrives.

EC

Martin, Are you in "enemy territory" or have you stumbled into no man's land?

Suggest that you give Melanie a ring and go and have a long chat.

Marbury

I agree with some of the other commenters here: it's impossible to assume, from the extract quoted, what Hasan's position actually is. I think it's essential you address this Martin.

Nicholas

I suspect that if this had been a white or Christian editor, referring to muslims in this way, he or she would have been arrested and prosecuted for hate crime - or at least villified as a racist. And if made public it would have driven large muslim crowds onto the street in protest and demanding that he be killed in the name of Allah.

Labour and the Left really do need to learn a lot more about what equality and fairness really means.

Jack R

In the 'Spectator' Blog introduction to Martin Bright on the 'Blogs' page here, you are described (or describe yourself?) as " an expert on the UK government's relations with radical Islam."

But can you put yourself in the same ranks of those excellent understanders of Islam such as Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq, Hugh Fitzgerald, Bill Warner and M.A.Khan? Apparently not, because you are stunned when the doctrines of Islam are applied. And for merely expressing a rational opinion, you find yourself being 'libelled' by the 'Engage' group (your blog, 22 July).

Surely, Mr. Bright, you can only draw one rational conclusion about the ideology and the groups you are up against? And act on it.

Grace

I have just listened to the relevant section in context and did so with an open mind. After all, it would be quite wrong to believe this allegation just on the basis of not liking Mr. Hasan’s other views. So, this is my honest assessment of it.

The context is this: Mr Hasan is making an argument that for Muslims it is not enough to worship, it is also imperative that they apply their intellect and reflect, consider and examine their religion and lives. In the course of the speech - before this point and thereafter - Mr Hasan quotes the Quran in support of the case that he is making at a particular moment. He does not quote the Quran simply in order to discuss or critique a particular passage but exclusively to support his case.

In that context, he turns to the non-believers who he refers to in his own voice (i.e not in quotation marks) as the kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists. He then uses quotes from the Quran to characterise these people as “people of no intelligence” and “cattle”. It is crystal clear that he is using these words from the Quran to pursue his argument that intelligence and intellectual activity are vital for the Muslim community, by contrasting such an approach with the attitudes of the kaffar who are unintelligent cattle by the testimony of the Quran itself.

So he is not merely describing this view but endorsing it and stating it with emphasis (listen to the tone). He DOES NOT qualify it therefater, he simply returns to the thrust of his argument.

The overall message may be inoffensive, it may even be admirable - he is right, after all, to call for intelletcual engagement - but his attack on “the kaffar” is clear and very offensive.

It is like, for example, an anti-semite making a speech calling for a return to simpler, less materialistic values and a then saying almost as an aside “we are all aware of what happens when your focus is on money and greed, you become like the Jews” before moving on. The aside may not be the focus of the speech but it speaks volumes about the racist attitude of the speaker.

So, the Senior Editor (Politics) of the New Statesman regards non-Muslims as “kaffar” who are unintelligent cattle. I genuinely cannot see any other reading of this speech.

I think the ball is in Jason Cowley’s court.

Ichabod Denton-Fowl

I was always taught at school that cattle were atheists actually. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was putting the cattle before the horse. For more see: http://moralorder.mediumisthemess.com/blog

David Alexander

Islam! I thought he was talking about Climate Change doubters.

Jeremy

It projects all the failings of "believers" themselves onto "non-believers". In that sense, it shows an infantile lack of self-understanding. Their minds appear to have been arrested (by religion) at a very early stage of development.

I think the best words of advice ever given to man were those inscribed on the portal to the Oracle at Delphi:

Know Thyself

and

Nothing In Excess

But advice was all it was. Not injunction, not commandment, but advice...

Peter Hearty

Fortunately, Harry's Place also posted the full speech.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/av/01_mehdihassan09.mp3

It is an impassioned plea for greater Muslim engagement with non Islamic learning. Mehdi Hasan argues throughout that there is no excuse for ignorance in this day and age, that Muslims must embrace learning, that there must be more secular education. He enthusiastically supports mixed schools and condemns those like the Taliban who oppose wider learning and schooling for women.

Given the overall message of his speech, the selected quotation seems odd. My interpretation is that he was trying to say something like the following and it just came out wrong. "Look at what the Koran says about atheists. It doesn't condemn them for immorality, it condemns them for ignornace. In other words, ignorance is the sin that is being condemned. So if you want to be a good Muslim, don't remain ignorant - educate yourself."

I don't think the contempt in his voice is contempt for unbelievers. Given the context, it is contempt for the ignorant.

Commondog

Hawkeye.

You supply us with your scheme which portrays Islam as being in some kind of period of inevitable innocent fallibility. Mere teething troubles perhaps.

This, if I understand, will be put right given another half century, because that is the way it happened with Christianity?

Putting aside the question as to whether you accurately position Christianity thus; on such scant evidence how can you offer this template as some kind of assurance of the direction in the development of religion? You simply don't know which way things are headed.

One glaring fault in your scheme is the fact that 600 years ago, those people who were burning heretics etc, knew only that way of doing things, no alternative was available. Those people who today, in the name of their faith, commit acts of similar barbarity, do so despite the fact that a more enlightened view is available to them, which they wilfully eschew.

History is not a perfectly rhyming succession of verses and your complacency is ill founded.

Hawkeye

CommonDog said: "You supply us with your scheme which portrays Islam as being in some kind of period of inevitable innocent fallibility. Mere teething troubles perhaps."

Well, that is certainly your interpretation of what I said.

"This, if I understand, will be put right given another half century,"

The period of time I mentioned has more than half a millennium, not half a century.

"...because that is the way it happened with Christianity?"

Well, that is the way it happened with christianity. 600 years ago, we were killing people in droves whereas now we invite the unbelievers and heretics to coffee and biscuit mornings.

"... on such scant evidence how can you offer this template as some kind of assurance of the direction in the development of religion? You simply don't know which way things are headed."

You need to seriously lighten up. I was not submitting a doctoral thesis for my PhD in Societal Social Development, I was comparing (a bit tongue-in-cheek) "now" with "then" and admiring the similarities.

"One glaring fault in your scheme is the fact that 600 years ago, those people who were burning heretics etc, knew only that way of doing things,"

No change there then. Islam is predominant in many very poor areas of the world where the bulk of people receive little or no education other than the religious one at the mosque or the madrassa. They get a rule book that says "Stone the unbeleiver", etc and you're surprised about how they act? Once again, we did exactly the same thing 600 years ago when our rulebook said things like (Duet. 20:22)"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel." or Exodus 22:18 "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". Fairly straightfoward instructions there then.

"... no alternative was available. Those people who today, in the name of their faith, commit acts of similar barbarity, do so despite the fact that a more enlightened view is available to them"

In some places perhaps, but go to Afghanistan and see what alternative worldview the female half of the population get. For many muslims, especially not thos in the West, no alternative worldview is on offer.

"History is not a perfectly rhyming succession of verses and your complacency is ill founded."

History shows how people reacted in certain circumstances. If the circumstances recurr then people will likely react the same way again because people react in fundamentally similar ways.

Commondog

Hawkeye.

My error: you did indeed state half a millenium not century.

However, is it reasonable to expect the world to wait around for that period, for these people to stop behaving as they do?

There are of course limits to what individuals - such as the women in Afghanistan you cite - are able to do as individuals, but those who have power over them are the ones to whom I refer as wilfully eschewing the more enlightened ways which are available in our time.

You say 'If the circumstances recur...' My very point is that the circumstances the Taliban and others find themselves in, are not merely a recurrence of former times; they are very different from those of the middle ages. So much so as to render your predictions dubious.

Augustus

Someone was certainly speechless the other day while waiting behind a burqa-clad woman in an ice-cream van queue.
When her turn came, she simply flipped the veil up and back over her head with full face in view, ate her ice-cream, then flipped the veil back over her head again. He was 'speechless':
Nobody was inflamed with lust, her husband didn't bat an eyelid, and she gave every appearance of enjoying both the ice-cream and the experience. Now that was a rational message if ever there was one.

Hawkeye

CommonDog said: "However, is it reasonable to expect the world to wait around for that period, for these people to stop behaving as they do?"

No it is not reasonable, but social inertia is a very difficult force to overcome. A lack of reason is the basic problem here - reason and religious faith are opposites, not bedfellows. So although I agree that militant behaviour is not reasonable I suspect we are stuck with it for a long time to come.

"the circumstances the Taliban and others find themselves in, are not merely a recurrence of former times; they are very different from those of the middle ages. So much so as to render your predictions dubious"

Who knows? Tell you what - if in 600 years time I'm right then you owe me a full steak and chips dinner with all the trimmings. If you're right, then I buy dinner. Are you on?

;-)

Suki

Because Christianity had a reformation it then follows automatically that Islam will have one.

What has this turned into? A comedy forum?

Paul Giles

"... the magazine's self-styled Senior Editor (Politics) Mehdi Hasan..."

"self-styled" How does that work, then? Do you all have to pick your own job titles at the New Statesman? Was he actually a tea-boy, or a fashion correspondant, who deluded himself that he was a "Senior Editor (Politics)"?

More useful, surely, to tell us what this guy actually does. You'd scarcely blame a whole magazine for the opinions of one of your colleagues, would you?

Commondog

Hawkeye.

Aye, go on then.

Bill Corr

Surely Mehdi Hasan deserves a safe Labour seat or maybe a posting to the Lords!

Labour could run him against Galloway!

Steve_M

Such poor journalism, no wonder you were sacked by the NS.

You haven't bothered to include the rest of the speech from where this quote has come from. Have you even asked Hasan to explain himself about these comments? I'm sure you still have some ex-colleagues from the NS who can put you in touch with him

And why "self-styled?" Was that the title you wish you had whilst employed there?

occasional ranter

The debate in the comments section on Harry's Place suggests this short quote is taken out of context. He spoke for an hour. For the sake of your reputation as a journalist, Martin, are you sure the quote fairly represents his point of view ?

Harry Plaice

Are you also speechless about the other parts of his speech where he describes Muslims as "cattle" who have "lost our ability to to think"?

Or are you perhaps unaware of them, and thus writing from a position of woeful ignorance? Or maybe you're deliberately omitting to mention them, and so portray Hasan in the very worst possible light, accuracy be damned.

smothered by sircumstance

Suki, for your information, the Reformation was a very bloody affair, revolving around hardline religious textual literalism, and an attempt to return to the perceived purity of early believers, it also included a nasty line in anti-semitism. Sound familiar?

blueharry

Martin Bright has crawled out of the Policy Exchange gutter and into the Harry's Place sewer.

Sunny Hundal puts the record straight here

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/07/27/an-attempt-to-smear-mehdi-hasan-from-new-statesman/

Here are some of the quotes not used by HP and Bright,

' We just follow the crowd, we are the cattle that Allah condemns in the Quran, and we can’t be. We can’t be. We have to acquire knowledge every day, night and day. And Rasoollah [the Holy Prophet] says…you have to go as far afield as China.

…

I watched this programme [“Science and Islam”, BBC4] and I really enjoyed it: a well-made programme, presenter very good…and yet I watched it with a sense of despair and a sense of sadness. Because this programme was pure history, every contribution was from the past, and the elephant in the room is the current Islamic contribution to knowledge and science and learning. Where was that in the series of programmes? It wasn’t there because fundamentally there isn’t one. That is the tragedy of our community today.

…

The Middle East, despite all its oil wealth…is an intellectually stagnant area of the world, where one in three Arabs, 65 million human beings, Muslims, are functionally illiterate, of which two thirds are women. 10 million children in the Middle East have never stepped foot inside a classroom, inside a school. That is the modern Muslim legacy. The Middle East…is now intellectually closed off to the outside world. … Closed off to the world - and let s not hear any of this nonsense about foreign literature, or foreign books, or foreign languages, being alien to Islam. It is the only way to learn, to open your minds to non-Muslims, to open your minds to other cultures, to learn foreign languages.

…

It is no surprise then that when you look at the Muslim world you see that we 1.2 billion Muslims have just 10 Nobel prizes to our name….and our Jewish brethren who we spend so much time fighting and arguing with, 12 million Jews in the world, they have 150 Nobel prizes to their name….We are not under-armed, we are under-educated. We have lost our ability to think, to acquire knowledge, to advance intellectually, and then we wonder why our community is in such decay, why globally wherever you find Muslims we have such problems. It’s not a secret, it’s not a conspiracy, its clear to anyone who looks at the numbers.

…

Just think about our priorities as a community, as a Muslim world, think about our priorities,: because when you look at our priorities….you look for example in the field of research and development…the West as an average spend around 2% of their GPD, their national income, on research and development…no Muslim country spends more than 0.5% of its national wealth on research and development…instead we spend the money on what? On killing, bombs, bloodshed, destruction, warfare, arms. Take Pakistan, for example, the “Islamic” Republic of Pakistan, with shamefully high levels of child illiteracy, and one of the world’s worst child labour problems, and yet it spends 20% of its GDP on its military and 2% of its GDP on education.'

Ganpat Ram

Never mind that the longer excerpts from this dangerous fellow's speech shows he is calling for his Muslims to ascquire knowledge - apart from his spitting dehumanisation of anyone who doubts his Arab book.

What the speech shows is that he identifies himself almost totally with a religion.

Why is the British self-styled Left allying itself so enthusiatically with such raging devotees of a religion?

Would that so-called Left be equally enthustatic in its support of HINDU nationalism as it clearly is of Islamist nationalism?

Any why is Bright speechless? In the fac e of Islamist fanaticism? All it proves is that his name is mistaken.

Ganpat Ram

HAWKEYE

I completely agree with you that it is tempting but facile to ascribe fanaticism of the Mehdi Hasan type to Islam only.

It is characteristic of ALL the Abrahamic faiths.

The only difference with Islam is that while Jews were exiled in the West and there acquired secular views from the heritage of polytheistic Graeco-Roman civilization, and Christians in the West did the same, the Muslims in the Middle East and Asia stayed at home with their dour monotheism. With results we know only too well.

It will take centuries, as you rightly say, for Muslims to become tolerant. Unfortunately in that time they may well have become the dominant culture of the West and Islaimised the West instead of the other way round.

As a Hindu I find all this deeply ironic. Westerners have been so proud of monotheistic Abrahamic religion, have constantly berated us poor Hindu "pagans" for being polytheists and idol worshippers - and now they, the proud Westerners, are shivering in mortal fear of an Abrahamic faith !

There must be a moral in that somewhere. Pride comes before a fall?

jane

Mr Bright. As a journalist, rather than 'buy the hype' of this article/attack on a site like HP (which interestingly is peddling back today from the claims of this blogger), why don't you check out a more englightened perspective at http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/5296 where the blatant targetting of this NS journalist has been exposed for what it is - a witchhunt.

As a journalist, I thought you might be the first to appreciate that accuracy and context is everything and that taking a solitary few lines out an hour long speech and quoting it without any context is neither fair nor counts as any kind of journalism.

The pickledpolitics site quotes full passages from the speech at least and highlights crucially that watching the whole speech reveals Mr Hasan to be more critical of the Muslims than of the West. Hasan encourages Muslims to not misunderstand non Muslims and goes on to support this many times including this one line: "...let s not hear any of this nonsense about foreign literature, or foreign books, or foreign languages, being alien to Islam. It is the only way to learn, to open your minds to non-Muslims, to open your minds to other cultures, to learn foreign languages."

Sounds far more open-minded than those targetting him on HP.

I realise NS is your former workplace now, but surely you have some loyalty left to it?

jane

Mr Bright, I thought as a fellow experienced journalist, at least you would not buy the hype of this HP blogger as he engages in this witch hunt against this NS journalist and realise that context is everything? I hoped that your years in this profession would mean that you would realise the danger of quoting a few isolated lines out of context as this blogger has and that it is neither fair nor journalism?

I realise you may no longer have any loyalties to your former employers at NS as its only been a few months....but surely you have some loyalties to the basic tenets of journalism such as accuracy which internet bloggers do not always adhere to?

Do any of you commentators not think that the HP blogger might be finding it quite amusing that his original article written for his own personal agenda no doubt, is causing so many of you to spend hours debating a random line he threw out there.

He was probably hoping that you would all ‘fall’ for his premise and start ‘analysing’ immediately rather than take the time to watch the whole speech, gauge the full context and read up on this site’s history over the last few weeks, to realise why a few individuals here might want to target NS??

At least the more enlightened website pickledpolitics have a great update on this ridiculous HP campaign they're exposing tonight: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/5305. I urge you all to read it whilst you continue this seemingly futile debate on this non issue.

Only arskin

By now we will all be wondering whether you are so embittered that you were party to cobbling up the Harry's Place smear articles with David Toube's blessing/assistance, Martin.

Kennybhoy

Poor Martin. First David Shayler and now Mehdi Hasan. Not having a very good week are we old chap?

PS To David ”Who Is He?” Blackburn, aka Speccie Techie in the Basement, aka Peter Oborne's Number One Fan! Please don't censor this one too....

David Blackburn

Kennybhoy,

That last one was touch and go. I had to consult P. O'Bore about it, he said you should calm down.

Ganpat Ram

JANE:

What the speech shows is that Hasan identifies himself in politics totally with a religion, Islam.

Why is the British self-styled Left allying itself so enthusiastically with such raging devotees of religious politics - one who, whatever else, dehumanises anyone who dares to question an Arab book?

Would that so-called Left be equally enthusiastic in its support of HINDU nationalism as it clearly is of Islamist nationalism?

As for all this sneering at "Neocons". What force in the world today is more conservative than Islam?

In fact, the dreaded Neocons at least believe in full freedom for believers and non-believers. So they are MORE progressive than the Oldcons of Islam.

Andy Gill

Honestly Martin. Is this really the first time you have heard this sort of Islamic supremacism?

Where have you been the last 20 years? No doubt attending dinner parties with your middle-class lefty friends, pointing your soft manicured fingers at Israel and emoting about the plight of oppressed Muslims around the world.

Kennybhoy

To David ”Who Is He?” Blackburn, aka Speccie Techie in the Basement, aka Peter Oborne's Number One Fan!

To which "last one" are you referring?

The one above or the second of the two censored ones over by?

Ganpat Ram

JANE:

I assume it would be OK for a Hindu editor of the New Statesman to refer to Muslims as "cattle" provided this was read out of some "holy" book?

Just mildly curious.

steve

So Ganpat Ram are you telling me there aren`t any Hindu extremists. Why were Hindu extremists murdering and burning Christians in south India recently. What about the Pogrom of muslims in Gujarat. What about the openly fascist RSS which wants to cleanse India of non Hindus. Incidently the first people to use suicide bombings in modern times were the Hindu tamil tigers.

winston

Get yourself a copy of The Satanic Verses. Read it. Reccomend it to your friends.

Shuggy

>>>From all we have to go on, he could have preceded it with something like "This is the kind of poison that Islam must rid itself of.">>>

Given that the passages come from the Koran itself and the gentleman in question appears to be of a Scripturalist disposition, it would be absolutely astonishing if he said anything like that. This slightly weird argument has got my attention for some reason. The suggestion that Mehdi Hasan's remarks have been taken out of context appears to be based on no coherent argument or evidence of any kind, yet we have someone linking Hundal's piece suggesting this sets the record straight'? It does nothing of the sort.

Jane

Mr Bright - might be worth you checking out this article questioning your journalistic principles for seemingly buying into this HP blogger's unfounded campaign against NS - http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/5312

Ganpat - I don't have a response for your question as its again based only on the original misquoted premise made by the apparently agenda driven 'c4 insider' on HP...listen to the whole speech to understand it fully.

Ganpat Ram

Steve:

Stick to the subject under discussion.

I have nowehere defended Hindu or any other species of extremist, so your supposition that I would is senseless.

What we are discussing here is why the New Statesman, a long-time leftwing paper, would have as a "senior" editor a man who cites with every sign of approval an Arab "holy" book as calling non-believers in that book "cattle". Astounding!

wonderer

Hawkeye and Ganpat Ram, there is another important distinction between (a) Judaism and (b) Islam and certain strands of Christianity. According to orthodox Jews, non-Jews do not have to convert to Judaism to attain salvation, which in Jewish terms is a share in the life to come: they merely have to adhere to the Seven Universal (or Noachide)Principles, which overlap in part with the Ten Commandments. Jews by contrast have to keep 613 commandments.

Merlyn

Unfortunately, more and more of us are becoming speechless as we watch Islamo-fascism mushroom before our eyes and the Left jumping on the bandwagon.
Its easy to talk amongst ourselves here where we are not overwhelmed by their jeers, but having the courage to face the populace at The Independent/ The Guardian/ BBC, not to speak of people who were once friends and think it is acceptable to make the comment "someone should nuke Israel" takes enormous perseverance.

Maggie

I'm not surprised that there are people who think like that. But I'm astonished that one of them is Senior Editor at the New Statesman.

flabslab

"What can I say? Nothing at all. I am speechless."

Me too, but what renders me speechless is that Martin Bright is speechless. Clearly he hasn't been paying attention, something that used to be considered essential for journalists. Muslim's making outrageously barbaric statements, and acting on them, is hardly an uncommon occurence. You'd either have had to be in a coma for a couple of decades or be a Guardian reader not to have noticed.

I'm not sure, given his lack of powers of observation or ability to listen, that journalism is quite the career that Martin is cut out for.

If he really was "speechless" perhaps it would have been more prudent to keep it that way rather than advertise his ignorance to all and sundry.

Still, better late than never, I guess.

Paul

For "Kaffar" read "Untermensch". I wonder how this creature's colleagues feel about working with a Nazi?

wonderer

Merlyn, one honourable exception recently was the Conway Hall Humanist Centre, whose chairman, Giles Enders, held his ground against militant Islamists: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2009/06/battle-of-conway-hall.html

Ganpat Ram

frankly, I myself would be inclided to give up on this.

As Muslim numbers grow in the West, opinions like Hasan's will become the norm.

The West is being Islamised fast, and we had better get resigned to it?

I feel so many times.

Our liberal culture is disappearing fast. Harsh Islamist sentiments are the future.

But - absurdity leads to atrocity, as Voltaire warned.

Cameron

This is 'journalism' at its lowest. I think Bright should offer a whole-hearted apology. Are these 'blog' areas nothing but a platform for spreading anti-Muslim nonsense?

Not Even Likely

Cameron, read it again. He did not spout nonsense. He quoted the man, and offered a link to the recording of what he quoted. If it is what was truly said, it is not "anti-Muslim nonsense." If he had to quit because of differences in religious opinion, it is his right to speak about it.

michael

us and them, who looks down upon whom, same old story.

Rob Browne

Martin:

Most of Mehdi Hasan's speech is a regurgitation of Chapter 2 of a book written by Jef Lang, and American convert to Islam. I can mail you a copy if you want.

Lang also quotes Rodinson and Lammens to make the same point. However, the only line in the Koran that comes close to the interpretation Mehdi claims is 8:65, not a verse that either Rodinson or Lammens quote in reference to the subject.

Of the 32 interpretations of the Koran currently available in English, not one uses the phrase Mehdi says is a quote.

Mehdi, and I would not accuse him of plagiarising, was certainly inspired by Lang's book; at one point he said as much, and then deleted his reply from the NS web-site.

But not before I had stored a screen grab.

It seems the error Mehdi made was a schoolboy error that should not be made by someone in his position. He took someone else's work and didn't check the facts.

If you want more detail about this, contact me.

simon ross

I've just come across all these articles on HP today after returning from my holiday.

I cannot believe that HP did not pull the plug on this nasty 'C4 insider' after the first installment when it became clear there was nothing to expose apart from his vendetta against this young man Hasan. I'm saddened that you Mr Bright are involving yourself and your respected publication in this.

I'm proud to be British and have defended the notion of 'liberty' my whole life as HP claims to, but at some stage the site has to make a stand against the disgusting extreme attacks and allegations being made on it against an innocent writer or it won't have any future let alone a respected one.

logdon

I read the HP article a few days ago and like Martin was incensed.

However it seems like Hasan was quoting rather than endorsing and there's a big difference.

I notice that one respondent refers to the Pope's Regensburg speech, in which he did precisely the same thing.

Now here's where the confluence diverges.

Following that quote the world erupted (yet again) in Islamic self righteous anger. Christians were killed and churches burned. The Pope's infallibility was trashed and he was forced by the expediency of saving lives to apologise.

OK, Mehdi Hasan isn't quite the Pope but between them, the NS and HP have a lot of readers yet where is the reaction of violence and death threat amongst us kuffars?

Hello? Anybody there with a few moon and star flags to burn? Or a can or two of petrol? Nope, can't hear it.

And isn't that the core of precisely what is going wrong?

At any tiny criticism the puerile pique detonates and death and destruction ensues. Like a whole tribe of ADHD infected delinquents, the unfettered rage consumes their very being and anything approaching normal reaction and reason is abandoned to a primordial force of violence and killing.

It is ridiculous. It actually reinforces colonial sterotypes of the hordes of enraged fuzzy wuzzies, yet we’ve seen it happen time after time.

During a clip on the London cartoon demonstrations I watched a bearded imbecile chanting over and over, ‘we will invade Denmark and take all their wives as war booty’. Beyond parody to us but the idiot meant it with every ounce of his primitive being.

That’s the challenge the world faces, not the nit picking of the equivalent of how many angels can reside on a pin head but the reality of mass slaughter.

Read thereligionofpeace.com site for the numbers. It is simply staggering.

We’ve passed all that mumbo jumbo. Seemingly they haven’t and no amount of pc or cultural relativity can conceal it. Or for that matter offer excuse.

Dixon

Can anyone make any sense out of Crystal Bullet? What are they trying to say?

shim

We need many more Zionists in position of power in the UK than we have.

Where are the conservatives and labour politicians we have done so much to support and promote, and why are they not 100% behind us?

Allan

The New York Times just announced the launch of a new magazine, called National Affairs magazine. National Affairs magazine is a news journal, and it will be heavy on the social science angle. This isn't reading for people that read celebrity gossip magazines. (It rhymes with "schmidiots.") The magazine is more or less a continuation of an older magazine, The Public Interest. The Public Interest ran for forty years, from 1965 to 2005, but had to close down for various reasons. Well, now it's back – with a new name. Perhaps to re-launch The Public Interest, the owners decided that ignominy wasn't good enough, and repackaged it as National Affairs Magazine and got some mortgage loan restructuring. Apple announcement is another breaking news. There's new iPods and other products to get, too, and each Apple announcement leads to people getting payday cash to buy more stuff.