Censorship by intimidation
A study by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre claims that a rise in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in London is being encouraged by mainstream politicians and sections of the media. In the Guardian Vikram Dodd has written:
The study mentions no newspapers or writers by name, but alleges that the book Londonistan, by the Mail writer Melanie Phillips, played a part in triggering hate crimes.
The text of this study, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime by Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Dr Robert Lambert, does not in fact mention my book Londonistan (although it is cited in the bibliography). What it says is this:
Islamophobic, negative and unwarranted portrayals of Muslim London as Londonistan and Muslim Londoners as terrorists, terrorist sympathisers and subversives in sections of the media appear to provide the motivation for a significant number of anti-Muslim hate crimes.
For Dodd (and if they did mean my book, the authors of this study) to single me out in this way is a crude smear which bears no relation to the facts. In my book -- as in everything I write about this subject – I go to considerable lengths to stress that many Muslims in Britain and elsewhere have no truck with, and indeed are amongst the principal victims of, Islamic extremism and terrorism.
My argument in Londonistan – which is not about London -- is that the British state first turned a blind eye to, and ever since has chosen to appease, Islamist extremism, allowing the radicalisation of British Muslims to gather pace, tolerating the preaching of hatred and doing nothing to stop Islamist subversion through the spread of sharia law. I have repeatedly said that this compromises the safety and security not only of society in general but of those many British Muslims who are desperate for the government to stop the radicalisation and intimidation of their community, and who are horrified by the way in which the British establishment has embraced extremist Islamist bodies and individuals as responsible interlocutors.
This study claims effectively that such commentary incites violence against British Muslims. There is not one shred of evidence for this. Remarkably, the authors make no acknowledgement of what is overwhelmingly likely to be the biggest reason for animosity against Muslims -- the repeated acts of terror and the 2000-4000 potential terrorists within the British Muslim community as reported by the intelligence service, not to mention the refusal by community leaders to take any responsibility for this state of affairs.
Indeed, given the scale of this threat it is remarkable that there has thankfully been so little violence against British Muslims. Where it has occurred, as in the appalling attack upon Muslim students at City University, the report claims the motivation was the perceived association of Muslims with terror. But that perception has not been created or fabricated by the media. There is a significant terrorism problem among British Muslims.
No reporting I can recall has ever said that all or most Muslims are implicated in terrorism. The media have merely provided the facts as given, which are alarming enough. So the authors’ implication therefore seems to be (as Muslim community leaders themselves argue) that no reference at all should be made to Islamic terrorism. The self-acknowledged motivation for such terrorism should apparently be censored.
Targeting the media in this way is not just to shoot the messenger. It is also to downplay the role of ideology in fomenting violence, and thus not merely to trivialise and downgrade the motivation for anti-Muslim attacks but also to negate by implication the very concept of the Islamic jihad as the cause of terrorism.
Conversely, the authors make no acknowledgement of where truly false and irresponsible reporting has indeed inflamed violence against a vulnerable British minority. The way the British media reports the Middle East incites irrational hatred not just of Israel but also Jews in general. This reporting takes the form of false claims about Israel’s aggressive and illegal behaviour, medieval-style blood libels that Israel deliberately kills Palestinian children, and conspiracies between Israel and America to put the world’s security at risk.
The result has been a frightening rise in anti-Jewish attacks in Britain to record levels. Unlike attacks on Muslims, which unfortunately rise after actual Islamic terrorist incidents, attacks on British Jews rise after the demonisation of Israel’s self- defence against terrorism as aggression. Many of these attacks are not reported because Jews are too frightened or fatalistic to do so. And contrary to the claim in this study, white racists have not stopped targeting orthodox Jews or Jewish institutions. The attacks on British Jews, which mean that every single Jewish communal event has to be guarded and Jewish schools now shelter behind razor wire, are coming from both white racists and Muslims. But there’s no mention of that in this study.
Moreover, the examples it provides of anti-Muslim attacks don’t even bear out its own hypothesis that these are incited by media reports. The dreadful attack on student Yasir Abdelmouttalib and the murder of pensioner Ikram Syed ul-Haqal by gangs of teenagers were without doubt inspired by hatred of Muslims. But as the study itself goes on to make clear, this hatred was not in turn inspired by media reports, nor even by perceptions of terrorism. The reasons were cultural, as an interviewee explains:
Muslims are now understood to oppose everything these kids aspire to. Flash cars, nightclubs, expensive clothes, jewellery, drugs, alcohol, casual sex, glamour, dancing, music, you name it! One kid [member of London street gang] said after the ...those attacks on the nightclubs [reference to failed terrorist attack on London nightclubs in June 2007] ... that he hated Muslims because they wanted to take all the fun out of life. I said this was not a Muslim attack and he said it doesn’t matter they either bomb the nightclubs or they tell you not to go there.
The second reason arises from the role of convert Muslims with their own backgrounds who condemn their anti-social gang behaviour and drug oriented lifestyles: Often they know someone who has left their scene and become a devout Muslim. That is like a defection. And whether they do or don’t they say they know this or that terrorist who used to be a great person till he joined the Muslims.
Most importantly, thirdly, street gangs like the ones that attacked Yasir and the City University students are increasingly coming into violent conflict with rival gangs who purport to be Muslim or who adopt aspects of Muslim dress for the sake of a new ‘street’ image ... As an interviewee, a local youth worker explains: On the one hand you have gangs like the Muslim Boys who have become attracted to what they like about being or rather looking Muslim. Looking like a terrorist you might say. Thats how they see it. They like to rob the kind of gangs they used to belong to. Take their drugs. Take their guns. Say look we used to deal drugs now we confiscate them. Money goes to a new cause. Then you get a response from the gangs they are attacking. They hate Muslims even more and maybe are afraid to attack the Muslim gangs directly so they attack soft Muslims, real Muslims, elderly Muslims instead. Big issue. Just like a handful of terrorists give Muslims a bad name, now these new so called Muslim gangs are causing the same problem, well, on the streets they are, in the gang scene they are. Big fights. Stabbings, guns....
In other words, the motivation for such attacks is, to put it mildly, complicated. But not, it appears, to the authors of this study. In another attack on an imam at the London Central Mosque the assailant, Brian Dougan, was found to be clinically insane. But for the authors, this was irrelevant: he had still been inspired by the general anti-Muslim prejudice all around him. Another arson attack on a mosque was said to have been inspired by the BNP victory in the European Parliament election. But lo and behold, the authors even blame the media for BNP thuggery:
Similarly, an experienced BNP activist in London, explains that he believes that most BNP supporters simply followed the lead set by their favourite tabloid commentators that they read every day. When these commentators singled out Muslims as threats to security and social cohesion, he says that it was perfectly natural for BNP supporters to adopt the same thinking.
Interesting how the authors of this study regard BNP thinking that fits their own prejudices as axiomatically true. The fact is that the BNP and all neo-fascist groups seize opportunistically upon anything in mainstream discourse that suits their ends. They are not becoming anti-Muslim because of what they read in the media; they are anti-Muslim because they are anti-Pakistani, anti-Hindu, anti-Asian, anti-black, anti-Jew -- prejudiced in other words against anyone who is not what they describe as ethnically white Anglo-Saxon. But because of the concern about Islamic extremism in Britain, they have cynically jumped onto that particular bandwagon and played down the rest of their agenda, in order to pose as a mainstream organisation rather than the unreconstructed thugs and bigots that they are.
In any event, to say that because thugs or madmen may be inspired to acts of violence by reports of Islamic extremism such reports should be suppressed is a bit like saying that since paedophilia regularly inspires people to try to attack paedophiles (and in once notorious instance where thuggery was exceeded only by illiteracy, a paediatrician) there should be no media coverage of paedophilia.
The real agenda of this study is censorship by intimidation – to defame and smear all those who comment, however responsibly, on a matter of such intense public importance as Islamic extremism and terrorism. The authors' agenda shows through their threadbare arguments. Take this passage about death threats against certain ‘responsible’ Muslims – threats which it says arise from a false premise:
To explain: from the perspective of most activists in the violent extremist nationalist milieu Muslim organisations that are linked directly or indirectly to the al-Qaida terrorist threat to the UK are considered worthy targets for attack and intimidation, and death threats are part of their panoply of tactical options. Like their counterparts in non violent extremist nationalist politics (most notably the BNP) these street activists have spent the last decade getting their instruction on who al-Qaida’s active and tacit supporters are in London from highly visible, obvious yet problematic sources. Thus violent extremist nationalist tabloid readers have become convinced that Londonistan is home to several national Muslim organisations that purport to condemn al-Qaida but are in fact part and parcel of the same threat.
In consequence, for activists in groups like the English Defence League (EDL), a leading member of a mainstream national Muslim organisation will be understood to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, every bit as much as an enemy target Anjem Choudary, a well known London based extremist al-Qaida apologist. This conflation of mainstream Muslim figures with extremists like Choudary is problematic for many reasons but in this current context it results in death threats being made to responsible London citizens because of false and often malicious assertions that they pose a security threat to the UK.
All death threats, against whomever they are directed, are a serious crime and should be treated as such. But the authors’ argument here is that certain national Muslim organisations do not pose a security threat because they have nothing to do with al Qaeda. Because this whole passage is referring to anonymous individuals and organisations it’s hard to be specific. Nevertheless, it is the case that a number of national Muslim organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain, the Muslim Council of Britain or the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which have no involvement with al Qaeda or terrorism in general, do subscribe to Islamist positions which are extreme by aiming, for example, to supplant Britain’s core values by those of Islam, or by supporting foreign terrorist regimes such as Hamas or Iran.
To repeat – anyone who issues death threats against anyone else, whatever organisations they belong to, should be prosecuted. But such threats should not be used as a pretext to prevent the troubling extremism of such organisations from being reported. What this passage is actually doing is intimidating commentators from exposing such extremism through the pernicious tactic of associating such commentary with attempted murder.
The view that Islamists who, for tactical reasons alone, oppose al Qaeda are not a threat to Britain -- and should indeed be treated as allies against al Qaeda -- is one of the most lethal mistakes that has been made by the British counter-terror world. One example of such egregious establishment wrong-headedness that I cite in Londonistan is in fact one of the authors of this report, Robert Lambert. A former officer in the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terror Command, who until 2008 ran the Metropolitan Police Muslim Contact Unit, Lambert told a conference organised by the Danish police that terrorism could not be fought by contact with moderate Muslims but through partnerships with the Salafists (radical Islamists) – two of whom were at one stage at least actually officers in his own police department. I wrote:
Lambert believed that this would enable the police to understand the way extremists thought before they committed any acts of terror. But it surely goes without saying that a Salafist officer, who is committed to the overthrow of the west and its replacement by an Islamic society, poses a security risk of the first order. For a police counter-terrorism specialist to be promoting this situation beggars belief.
Now Lambert has co-authored this study which claims that identifying such Islamists as extremists is to incite attacks upon British Muslims. But just look at the organisation behind this study, the European Muslim Research Centre. On its advisory board sit Anas Altikriti of the Muslim Association of Britain, which supports Hamas, and Mohamed Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain, which supports the Islamisation of Britain and which has a number of Islamist affiliates. The study also says it drew its information from, amongst others, the Muslim Safety Forum, Islamic Human Rights Commission, Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) UK, the Federation of Islamic Student Societies and the Muslim Council of Britain – all of which are Islamist fronts.
The idea that this report is objective is thus demonstrably absurd. It is merely a piece of tendentious Islamist-promoting propaganda.
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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
Melanie Phillips blog archive
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Sonia
January 30th, 2010 7:30pmJust a sad reflection of The Guardian machine under Alan Rusbridger, I'm afraid.
Just as Ms Phillips used to work for that newspaper I used to read it. And where did I first come across Melanie Phillips for the first time?
Oh, in an extract of Londonistan published where? Why, in The Guardian's de facto Sunday edition, The Observer, which was then edited by Roger Alton. And we've all read about Roger Alton's departure from that paper and Alan Rusbridger's role in it.
Did the wrong man take the exit?
Trumpeldor
January 30th, 2010 7:59pmMelanie,
I do not want to be pessimistic but UK is cooked
Family breakups,, failing school system,empty churches,trash news and trash press ,huge inflow of muslim immigration,persistent dhimmi like behaviours of most politician
All these parameters lead to Albion demise
I suppose the weak Mr Cameron will be elected and the slide will go on
Beware,UK citizens,this last election might be the last chance to shift the balance toward normalcy which is BRITISH VALUES AND STRENGHTENING LINKS WITH THE ANGLOSPHERE !
This evil UE is killing you....
logdon
January 30th, 2010 8:00pmI also spotted this article and sent it to Melanie, national media and sites such as Jihad Watch which lift the lid on utter garbage such as this.
No doubt the informed will realise that this is yet more Left/Islamist agitprop completely in line with the ridiculously disengenuous and whining Muslim Police Association assertions which we saw last week.
By rights, if the Guardian is the fearless and frank organ it so obviously purports to be, Melanie’s rebuttal will be published by them.
Fat chance.
So in bed with Bunglawala who is a featured CiF contributor, his MCB and any other Tom, Dick and Harry Muslim organisation they care to befriend, they publish crap like this and we're expected to believe that they are a serious newspaper?
Circulation is tanking. Revenue is shredded. The pompous ass, Michael White and his Rusbridger boss are proven hypocrites. Even CiF posters are awakening to the fetid smell of the halal coffee which wafts from it's noxious bowels.
Thankfully not many rely on the Guardian anymore for serious reporting. And even more thankfully many are actually understanding what is going on all around them.
After waiting passively for some kind of defence and support for the massive majority of indiginous and loyal citizens by our establishment we are disgusted, dismayed and running out of patience.
There’s trouble ahead and in my view if Muslims want a quiet life and some kind of respect they’ve got to earn it.
So far we see provocation after provocation. Insult after insult. Threat after threat. For such a small minority they sure blow a lot of smoke. Perhaps if that ceased our reactive anger would abate.
Don’t hold your breath.
logdon
January 30th, 2010 8:07pmCourse this kind of increasing occurance is neither here, nor there in the Guardians eyes.
“Facial Reconstruction for UK Brothers Bludgeoned in Muslim Gang Hammer Attack
What started out as a family celebration of New Year's Eve in the Angel and Crown pub on Roman Road, Bethnal Green ended with four family members being attacked by a gang of muslim thugs. Two brothers, Thomas and David Barry, had their bodies pummelled and their faces smashed when they were set upon by a gang of up to 30 "youths" armed with hammers. The brothers had gone outside the pub to go to the aid of Thomas's son and his 16 yr. old girlfriend who the muslim gang had already attacked.”............
Read it all. theopinionator.typepad.com/
Joe Strummer
January 30th, 2010 8:11pmIslamic Human Rights Commission ? Oh, dear ! Who said irony is a peculiarly British comedic trait ?
Nicholas
January 30th, 2010 8:23pmThey want to shut you up and will keep stretching the parameters of what constitutes "incitement" and "hate crime" until they are able to do so. Political Correctness with criminalising sanctions for those who don't toe the line. More and more freedoms being lost by incremental legislation laughed off as only affecting "extremists" and/or a very small minority. That's alright then, back to Eastenders and Celebrity Brig Brother.
These moves have already had the effect of confusing people about what they can legally say or write. The disproportionate police responses (special squads, arrests of "ordinary people") are deliberate and intended to intimidate people into "compliance" and to create a climate of fear and paranoia. Jack Straw and the other East German wannabes in this appalling government are behind this, but particularly Jack Straw, the arch-enemy of freedom - all freedom. The sooner that nasty piece of work is removed from any power over us the better.
In addition those with an "agenda" quickly pick up on the intimidating effect of accusation using the coded language of the authoritarian cod-communists seeking to control us ("incitement", "hate crime") to shut up opposition and stifle dissent.
We are in a war against evil but most idiots don't even see it and just scoff if you try and point it out to them. Thus Nazi Germany.
YA
January 30th, 2010 9:32pmThe only way to follow is
(1) separation
(2) improvement (on our side)
(3) containment (of the opposite side)
Effective (3) (wich is goal) is impossible without proper (1) and (2). Let us discuss.
Wilders (how to emulate?).
Prols (EDL, etc.).
Elections (who?).
Apartheid society (in construction).
National issues (education, banks, non-jobs, manufacturing, oil prices).
Stephen Gash
January 30th, 2010 10:13pmThe EDL goes to great lengths to explain that it is against Islamist extremists, and not all Muslims. Fat lot of good it's done them, judging by what this er...."study" says about the EDL.
Conversely we in Stop Islamisation Of Europe - SIOE do not believe in moderate Muslims, based on the clear evidence to the contrary in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan and most other Muslim countries, including the EU-aspirant Turkey, where persecution of non-Muslim minorities is official policy, and undertaken by police-forces etc.
"Moderate" Muslims do nothing to help minorities in Islamic countries and would certainly do nothing to help non-Muslims in Europe if Choudary and his ilk ever gained control.
Not one of the 57 Muslims countries, comprising the largest voting bloc in the UN, has signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instead signing their own Cairo Declaration which enshrines sharia law, which in turn, enshrines the imposition of 3rd-class status of non-Muslims compared to Muslims.
I've not seen any "moderate" Muslim group condemning the Cairo declaration.
Pamela Monks
January 30th, 2010 11:02pm"Our core value is that a growing European Muslim
population makes significant and valuable contributions to the safety, prosperity and cohesion of European communities
and countries and to the well being of Europe as a whole."
The real tragedy is that statement was once true. 25 years ago the Muslim community worked hard, posed no threat to anyone, and was integrating. Of course that was before such organisations as the European Muslim Research Centre existed.
Since the Salman Rushdie affair idiotic government and EU policies have not just permitted but actively encouraged the radicalisation of a generation of Islamic youth. The result of this is that the younger generation, instead of being more integrated, are actually totally disaffected with our society. Many now support Sharia law, while some actively promote terrorism.
The government's response is to encourage the extremists as long as they don't promote violence. Are they completely insane? Talk about putting the lunatics in control of the asylum. Why can't the government see that their policies are completely disempowering the moderate majority? They're the very people they should be backing as they have the most to lose if the extremists get control. Surely that should be obvious to even the most incompetent officials.
A few more years of current policy and the moderates will be totally helpless, just as the peaceful majority were helpless in Nazi Germany once the Nazis had full control. The only way to stop the extremists then will be for us to fight them, and that means full-scale civil war in which all the Muslims will become our enemy, just as all the Germans became our enemy in 1939. Perhaps that's what the government wants. It would be one way of wrecking the country they seem to hate so much.
Margaret Muller-Johansson
January 31st, 2010 9:07amPamela Monks very true, 25 years ago the muslims you mentioned that you said was hard working and was integrating are different then the ones now is it because 25 years ago there were less muslims? I know more muslims grow more they start being in their ghettos and start hating the western civilization they wouldn't integrate the western culture because they think we are not good "the unbelievers", anyhow the less people integrate the more hate they have like I said before 25% of the British population are muslims in Tower Hamlet alone there is 1 million Bangladeshi, there are about 200,000 Somalis, I don't know how many Pakistanis and Turkish are around the Turks integrated better then other ones, I think muslim immigration to the west should stop unless they are willing to respect the western Christian or atheist culture
and I don't think that will happen because of their teachings
Norm
January 31st, 2010 11:12amNot all muslims are suicide bombers but all suicide bombers are muslim. There is a war coming and admitting Turkey into the EU and opening the floodgates to allow millions of muslims free entry into Europe will be the start of it.
Worried
January 31st, 2010 11:22amDear Melanie,
How come The Speccie hasn't mentioned this speech by a Labour Cabinet Minster?
video001.wmv (6.6 MB)
Dr Michael Salt
January 31st, 2010 12:44pmAs ever Mel stands strong. Thank you, and bless you.
Truth is your weapon, and it will out.
GaryO
January 31st, 2010 12:49pmMelanie wipes the floor with yet again another islamo-apologist.
Bravo!
Elise
January 31st, 2010 1:51pmThis is just an attempt by the looney left to silence the critics of their agenda and to demonize those that disagree with them. Keep up the good work.
just Louise
January 31st, 2010 2:05pmMy second attempt at posting this since early this morning:
We women are set to be the losers, it seems.
Last week, according to the Torygraph, the Welsh Conservative MP David Davies, deploring a vicious sexual attack on a woman by a 14-year-old Muslim youth, made the not unreasonable point that some of the communities that have settled in Britain have "barbaric and medieval attitudes" to women and that this view of women as "second-class people" must be addressed by those communities.
Instead of agreeing with him, Call Me Dave and the rest of the Conservative Party immediately distanced themselves from his remarks.
And on the Labour side (Harriet Harperson's side) Hain the Pain said Davies "should be ashamed of himself".
Another example of politically correct mollifying of Muslims - even if it means the political incorrectness of soft-peddling women's rights.
Dixon
January 31st, 2010 3:13pmJust Louise et al...when future historians....and I mean DISTANTLY future ( after this era has culminated and been replaced by another ) will look back at our time and be forced to conclude that a kind of insanity gripped society.
Of course, it may possibly not be so distant. Perhaps the next generation, when they hit their teens, will re-discover the desire for the freedoms that our parents generation struggled for ( including early feminists ) and which our contemporaries ( including latter-day "phoney-feminists" ) now seem keen to throw away. Perhaps todays fashion for abnegation and cultural self-destruction will turn out to be a vast blip. We can hope.
Charles
January 31st, 2010 3:48pm@Margaret Muller-Johansen
The population of Tower Hamlets in mid-2008 was 220500 according to ONS (mid-year population estimates).
The percentage of the UK population describing itself in the 2001 Census as white-British was just under 86%.
These figures are freely available on the internet.
Alex Bensky
January 31st, 2010 4:18pmI read some of the reviews of Londinistan, Melanie, and have followed various references to it since. I notice very few of the criticisms actually involve rebutting your contentions with facts. The emphasis seems to be that they can't necessarily disprove what you say but they don't like the conclusions.
And yes, I would have been fascinated to have this study go a little farther and do a comparative study, comparing the attacks on Muslims by non-Muslim British with the attacks on Jews by British Muslims, both as to number, type, and motivation. Maybe the study's authors are working on that right now.
I note with interest that if some people feel hopeless, frustrated, and find their society slipping away from them then blowing up Jews is perhaps not actually condoned but is at least deemed an understandable reaction. But lesser reactions--and I am not approving of beating up people you don't like--is seen not as understandable but as a vicious reaction to harmless people whose religion you don't like.
Mike Wood
January 31st, 2010 4:27pmI've tried to make this point several times in the speccie but I always seem to be censored. I'll try again:
Whilst politicians and officials here cringe and fawn obsequiously to "engage" with muslims and the likes of Robert Lambert busy themselves denying the evidence of their own eyes and abandon the use of reason in the service of “community cohesion”, there are voices in the muslim world beginning to stir and to question the status quo – even the validity of Islam.
Check this out: ex-muslim Nonie Darwish speaking about the currents stirring in places like Morocco and Egypt.
http://www.aina.org/news/20100130010205.htm
The unpalatable fact is that Islam is an awesome force. Coupled with oil money and the muslim demographic explosion, it looks as though our goose is well and truly cooked. But, in the last analysis, it is built on a bed of falsehoods. If the falsehoods can be exposed and the credibility of the founder undermined, the huge dark forest could actually burn to the ground. It just needs some sparks of truth to get it going.
Political Islamism
January 31st, 2010 8:42pmMelanie,
If you look closely at the report, on the acknowledgements page you'll notice that the EMRC, and by extension the report, were largely financed by the Cordoba Foundation (Anas al-Tikriti's org - an Ikhwan front) and IslamExpo (whose trustees include Mohamed Sawalha/Hamas and Mohammed Kozbar/Hezbollah).
read more at politicalislamism.wordpress.com
Sam Armstrong
January 31st, 2010 8:49pmTrumpeldor says: "This evil UE is killing you...."
Wrong. We are killing ourselves. There can't be many people left now who are still seriously in the 1997 frame of mind can there? Surely by now it is common knowledge, and suppressed common knowledge at that, that there is a dark force working within our society.
Those who are fully aware of the darkness present, are working for the darkness, such as BBC people, or the PC brigade. Then there are those who do not work for the darkness, but are aware of it, and choose to appease it, because they are too afraid to defend the gift of freedom and rule of law that they have been graciously handed, but are too idiotic to defend or even recognise.
The WW2 survivors are now all safely ensconced in maximum security elderly asylums, and cannot ask any more questions. The trendy kids now run the country and want to appear fashionable. The baby-boomer generation adults are outraged but think more about paying off the mortgage on the holiday home in Spain than they do protecting the scant remains of what their fathers and mothers nearly died for.
Either way the British people are simply unmoved by what is happening, and will pay for it with their own bloody deaths.
But in the meantime, where is that remote?
Sam Armstrong
January 31st, 2010 9:01pmjust Louise
January 31st, 2010 2:05pm
Good point. Women will lose seriously in all this. But I think that the importance of women in relation to all other minority groups was clarified when Barrack beat Hilary, no?
White women, although deemed greater victims than white men, still come from the 1st world, and will naturally have to concede to any male from an ethnic minority.
steve bronfman
January 31st, 2010 11:42pmIts very much like the people that blame Robert Spencer for being Islamophobic because he documents Islamist crimes on his website http://www.jihadwatch.org/
Reporting on the crimes, tactics, ideology, comments and actions of Islamofascists is not "right wing" or "extremist," it is those very things reported about that cause Islamofascism. Melanie Phillips simple stands up for womens rights, freedom of the the press, freedom of thought, minority rights etc all the things suppressed in Sharia societies and is fighting against the "creeping sharia" taking place throughout the west (already polygamous spouses are receiving government assistance in the UK etc).
One simple way to reduce Islamophobia is for every Iman and Muslim leader in the UK to hold mass rallies against Islamic terrorism instead of justifying it as they have in their so-called "peace rallies" that are nothing more than pro-hezballah/hamas rallies calling for the end of Israel/US etc. They should also stop preaching hatred in Mosques (as documented in several undercover videos available online).
Michael
February 1st, 2010 12:22amStephen Gash...what an appropriate surname.
Anyway, the EDL. Don't make me laugh, they're fat football supporters with zero grasp of the argument other than they've got spare time on the weekend to have a fight after a few pints in Stoke town centre or somewhere.
Whether they distinguish between Muslims and Islamic extremists is a moot point in the bigger picture: they simply look and act like a drunk version of the BNP. How anyone is meant to take what they 'do' seriously I've no idea.
just Louise
February 1st, 2010 9:40amSam, it can't be entirely coincidental that so many of the most vocal warners against Islamicisation of western societies have been/are women:
Ayin Hirsi Ali
Brigitte Bardot (fined several times for doing so by the appeasing forces)
Oriana Fallaci
Brigitte Gabriel
and, of course, Melanie Phillips
It's time the Harpersons and the Tonges joined them!
NON prophet
February 1st, 2010 10:20amAh, islamaphobia, that deceitful non word.
Yet unique this er!...crime.lol against er..islam ?? :-D,
is within the power of its supposed, victims to end,
or at least to curtail so severely as to make it virtually nonexistent.
this is right on point, actually dont remember where it is from
Here are five excellent ways Muslims can end "Islamo-phobia":or maybe better coined, as much more truthful
"extremist ideology-phobia"
1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on NON-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the UK/ U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means.
In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by stating unequivocally that American, British and Israeli civilians are innocent people.
3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis, rather than this continual drip drip working toward impose Sharia upon those non-Muslims.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5.Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.
Fact.
In the immediate aftermath of each of the dozens of attacks by Muslims including Americans/Europeans since 9-11-7/7, the conversation has been dominated by predictions of inevitable violence toward Muslims by bigoted Americans/Europeans who immediately are completely unable to control their rage.
And each time a backlash has been virtually nonexistent,(and this style of reaction is almost entirely restricted to the islamic community anyway).
Our journalistic and political elites have become terrorism's unwitting domestic enablers, perceiving religion-based violence where there is NONE, while more importantly, and shamefully IGNORING it where it is both,widespread/intensifying.
Patrick
February 1st, 2010 11:15amSo let's get this straight.
Melanie thinks there's 'not a shred of evidence' that media reporting has any effect on attacks on Muslims, and yet believes media reporting has huge responsibility for attacks on Jews.
That makes perfect sense.
Suffolkbor
February 1st, 2010 1:31pmNon Prophet:
You left out ,
6. Establish by the garnering of incontrovertible evidence that pigs can leave the ground under their own power and take flight.
7. Convince the world and the astronauts who first landed there in 1969 that the moon is comprised entirely of green cheese.
8. Stick jelly to the ceiling .
I am afraid that your highly laudable and sensible prescription has about as much chance of occuring as the additional strictures that I have tabled above .
Suffolkbor
February 1st, 2010 1:37pmPS.
I should have said stipulations ,
not strictures .
Augustus
February 1st, 2010 1:53pmBritain has always been a multi-
cultural society, but then without any form of Islam. Now that element has been added in Britain and Europe the previous
multicultural model clearly doesn't function as it used to.
That must be as clear as daylight. Many seem to have forgotten that European culture
is strongly derived from Christianity with a fundamentally different culture to Islam. In September 2001, on a visit to Berlin, Silvio Berlusconi said: "Western culture is superior to that in the Islamic world." It is interesting to note Western reactions to that statement at the time. The Prime Minister of
Belgium,Guy Verhofstadt, called his remark 'dangerous'. Romano Prodi (then President of the European Commission) said: 'We are all equal'. Lous Michell, the Belgian Foreign Minister called the remark 'unacceptable
and against European values'. Without wishing to defend the Italian Prime Minister per se, one should nevertheless ask: Wasn't he right? Because the only true measurement for comparing cultures is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And by any measure, after many centuries of terrible
deeds, Europe is without doubt, in human rights terms, far ahead
of the Islamic world. It was in fact a professor of politics from Kuwait, Ahmed al Badhadi, who openly agreed with Berlusconi: The Islamic community knows no freedom of speech or civil rights. How many
Arabian writers have been murdered or put in prison? At which Islamic university can you study other religions? How in Heaven's name can Europe have such little self- confidence in itself that these things may never be said?
Stephen Gash
February 1st, 2010 1:59pm@ Michael
It is unsurprising a person of your ilk should attack the messenger at the first resort. That you do so in such an unimaginative manner is typical. Please reveal your surname, keyboard warrior.
You actually made my point. If the EDL is such an easy target, then there is no excuse to lie about them. Nevertheless, their critics resort to lies, thereby undermining their own argument. Those critics are people such as you, I suspect.
NON prophet
February 1st, 2010 2:30pmsuffolkbor, agreed agreed :-D
but so easy to put this together
it shows the intentional and obvious vested interest in NOT facing facts :-0
oh the laughably named islamic human rights assoc, those shills at the ramadan found.mpac etc all recently
came together when Mr Wilders
visited the uk on a bbc phone in debate, along with a well orchestrated line up of detractors.
He dealt with each one with such ease.
"not intending offence, but facing facts"
just proves that none of their nonsense has any legs, (a pity the M.P.A. was not involved too, their devisive
drivel would have been dispatched just as fast).
Tancred
February 1st, 2010 2:35pmIt amazes me how much traction Muslim claims of violence gets.
Strange that our politicians don't talk much about the wave of Muslim crime against non-muslims both at home and abroad.
Try walking through a "muslim" area one day. It's hard NOt to be insulted, abused and threatened. But no-one - police or politicians - dare say anything.
But then again they think they need their votes.
They may think again if they find that the ONLY votes they have are Muslim.
Philo
February 1st, 2010 2:40pm"...a certain perception of Xs which may be expressed as hatred toward them, whose rhetorical or physical manifestation is directed towards individuals and property, community institutions and religious facilities, expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action..."
Would this be considered a good definition of a "hate crime" such as could be written into law? Would it allow criticism of the state of Israel, without the calumny of anti-Semitism? Would it allow criticism of Islamism, without the calumny of insulting Muslims?
Derek Pasquill
February 1st, 2010 3:50pmFurther evidence if any were required that is, that academia, the police and the Government are in hock to the thanato-politics of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A politics that is life and freedom destroying and which should have no place in the British body politic.
Michael
February 1st, 2010 4:35pm@Stephen Gash....Its Murphy, cheers. And, er, take a look around you sport, its an internet message board, ergo, people using keyboards to type stuff. A pleasant distraction from the occasional mudanities of the day for me, you obviously had you ironyometer turned off when you posted that.
Anyway, back to the EDL, albeit briefly. I completely respect your right to defend what they do and I sincerely mean that, my point was not their representation in the article above merely that as a vehicle for carrying a potent message about the unease of sectors of British society regarding the erosion of values they hold dear, fat blokes dressed in stone island holding Union Jack flags aping songs about the IRA doesn't really cut it for me.
Anyway, whats your opinion of these chaps, the startingly titled Welsh Defence League, nice lads eh?
http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/10/real-live-supporters-of-nick-griffin-go-bananas-in-swansea/
Stephen Gash
February 1st, 2010 6:14pm@ Michael Murphy
I'm not defending the EDL especially, but where's the value in attributing to them something they actually oppose, namely putting all Muslims in the same basket?
I can show you videos and images of Muslims doing the Nazi salute on demos. I've seen them do it on their demonstrations in London and heard them shout "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas". None were arrested, but you can bet your bottom dollar if any anti-Islamist group shouted the same thing about Muslims their feet wouldn't touch the ground.
I actually went on two EDL demos in Birmingham and on neither of those occasions did they throw anything at the general public or the police. This is why no images were seen in the media of them doing it.
However, I personally saw a gang of about 20 Muslim youths peppering police and passers by with bottles, stones and glasses.
However, no images were seen in the media even though photographers must have obtained hundreds.
I challenged several national editors by suggesting if they had taken one image of an EDL pelting police with missiles it would have been around the world in minutes and published. They all agreed. When asked why no pictures of Muslims throwing things were published none gave a straight answer.
In January 2009, Muslims demonstrated through London against the Gaza bombings. At least 200 went on the rampage and smashed up shop windows etc. I know for a fact, because the police told me, 70 demonstrators were arrested for serious imprisonable offences. However, the BBC reported the demo as "peaceful".
While such double standards are applied by the media, then nothing will be solved.
By all means publish the misdemeanors of the EDL and any other anti-Islamist group, but let's see the other side too.
Churches are vandalised on a regular basis by Muslims, even though none has sent out Christian terrorists to blow up planes and trains.
If all Muslims have to put up with is a few demonstrations against "extremists" then they have got off pretty lightly in my opinion, when one considers that over half the mosques in England are reportedly "radicalised".
David Alcock
February 1st, 2010 6:19pmThere are many commentators in the media who talk sense on these and related issues including Melanie, Douglas Murray, Civitas and numerous others. Their views resonate with many frustrated and disillusioned people who wonder where our country, our democracy and our leaders have gone. But these right-minded and perceptive souls, like most of us, have nowhere to go. The main parties have only one mission; to disagree with each other and get elected. Democracy is not their objective or their muse it's their meal ticket and their ruse. So Melanie and Co. like so many of us are disenfranchised. Cameron and Brown would not get a look in if there were a leader worth following, with some ideas in their head and a credible mission to restore the country. I wish these commentators who know the media and can communicate would become active and lever change. They should get together.
'Just Louise' maybe you only read female writers but the list of commentators I have in mind is largely male. If feminism had got it's boots on earlier and had,less selfishly, lent an eye to the broader public interest, it could have done more to forestall the tide of political correctness that now overwhelms us.
Feminists,like Gayes as key PC beneficiaries not only let it roll but gave it regular shoves until now, and perhaps too late, when they started to realise that not all victim groups are on the same side.In my experience many women commentators have been very ambivalent if not actually positive towards Islam. As for Oriana Fallacci, I'm amazed that her incontinent gibberish gets to print without the editor and translator that her ego so energetically resists.
As to anti-semitic attacks, I drove through Didsbury, last November, at night and for the first time in 20 years. I asked my son who was driving what all the fortifications around the schools were. He said it was to defend Jewish schools against Muslim attack. As we continued the scene became increasingly grim with higher fences and barbed wire, like Belfast Police Stations at the peak of the troubles. All the while, private security vehicles patrolled everywhere apparently for the same reason.
This shameful situation never makes the headlines.
Lara Tonini
February 1st, 2010 8:26pmImagine if i am woman a lesbian How I would be treated under Sharia Law in Britain?
Would I get protection from the lefties? From the government? From the feminists? From the Church of England?
wonderer
February 1st, 2010 10:06pmWorried, what's the web address for video001.wmv (6.6 MB) please?
Lara Tonini, you'd better become a martial arts master, if you're allowed to study them.
Nicholas
February 1st, 2010 10:25pmAugustus asks: "How in Heaven's name can Europe have such little self- confidence in itself that these things may never be said?"
Because Europe is in the hands of the Left who always take the others side against their own. Always have, always will. They are the agents of chaos and destruction, utterly perverse. Only the Left could display the hypocrisy to engage with an extremism that threatens the very cornerstone of their own creed - feminism. So determined are they to prove themselves free from the taint of "Islamophobia", a construct of their own, that they will appease mediaeval barbarism and cruelty to the point of being craven. "Engage with"? What nonsense. Do you "engage with" a viper? Or a tiger?
just Louise
February 2nd, 2010 11:42amDavid Alcock, Oriana doesn't have an ego any more - she died some years ago.
I take your point re feminists - most were so far left that they busily condemned in European men the "male chauvinism" whose far worse forms in other societies they barely raised a murmur about. We see the same double standard now from Harriet Harperson.
One of the most terrifying headlines I ever saw recently was "Has Feminism Cost Us Europe?" Certainly, the tendency to heed the environmentalist stricture "Zero Population Growth" might have. Many recent Muslim immigrants (with those state-funded polygamous that Steve mentioned in tow) have no such qualms, it seems.
This country will soon be unfit for purpose.
NON prophet
February 2nd, 2010 11:54ambbc iplayer
inside out (nw).- feb 1
terrorism on the doorstep
reqd viewing
head of NW s ctu,
the NW is a hotbed for violent jihadism.
on instructions for er "sisters" indoctrinating teqs on young or babies, no baby is too young for jihad.
"these are weapons, to kill the jews, kill the infidels"
how about kim howells gov intel cmtee, on evidence/films found in manchester, its a dreadful thing evil, it is a nazi thing isn t it.
well YES IT IS!
obviously the first time, you know ...being the hd of gov intel cmtee :-) he s seen anything like it :-D
holy islamaphobe! wheres he been.....wake up!, the deliberate ineptitude is unfathomable.
the overtly pc uncomfortable twisty turny bbc/police, makes interesting viewing
or....obviously faced again with overwhelming evidence islamaphobes every one :-D
Olgordo
February 2nd, 2010 12:03pmYes, Patrick, what Melanie thinks and believes does make "perfect sense". Most of the British MSM (particularly the BBC, with Channel4 a close runner up) bends over backwards to placate and appease the Muslims / Islamists / Arabs, but is totally biased when it comes to reporting on Jews / Israel.
hadrian
February 2nd, 2010 10:59pmAbsolutely excellent! One of your best pieces for a long time- and given the standard of most of your material, this is praise indeed! You have them nailed. The problem boils down to simply this: we prefer not to know, please don't tell us the very unwelcome truth about the very real threat these fanatics pose.
Philip Horowitz
February 3rd, 2010 8:32amI hope Melanie comments on this: http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2010/2/2/cambridge-university-israel-society-cancels-invite-to-benny.html
De Rigueur
February 5th, 2010 11:33amWafa Sultan mean anything to you chaps?
Check her out at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciOGS6r97oE
Well worth the visit.
Original Tony
February 5th, 2010 9:32pmWhat most people cannot see is that Europe is moving rapidly to the right...neo-nazism is on the increase and if anyone has to fear anything, it's the muslims. Time will tell.
Anthony
February 6th, 2010 7:54amMelanie, I read your book Londonistan and appreciate your perspective. It seems to me, however, that you, like other commentators, fail to grasp or fail to mention the most important part of the Muslim problem facing Europe: demographics. The threat of Muslim terrorism is surely trivial compared to the threat of Muslim demographics.
It's all very well saying most Muslims don't actively engage in terrorism. A very high proportion of "ordinary Muslims" do, however, hold views which are fundamentally antithetical to our way of life. They would like to see sharia imposed. 36% of young British Muslims think that "apostates" should be executed.
At the moment they are only a fraction of the population and therefore not in a position to assert their views through the ballot box except in a few benighted parts of the country. With their demographic growing literally ten times faster than the rest of the population, however, that situation isn't going to exist for very much longer. If their current rate of expansion continues Britain may well be a Muslim majority nation by the end of this century. Why is no one talking about this? Why aren't you talking about it?
And why are you so contemptuous of the BNP when it seems to me that, at the moment, they are the only electoral option we have to oppose the Islamic assault on European civilisation? Is it some NUJ rule you have to follow? "Odious" seems to be the preferred epithet whenever a journalist mentions the BNP.
I know the NUJ have specific rules for how their members must treat the BNP - under threat of disciplinary action, I believe, if they fail to be aggressive enough.
I have browsed the BNP website and I see no sign of anti-semitism there.
Barbara
February 6th, 2010 6:36pmI've seen Melinaie on QT and have been impressed with her honest answers without waffle. They have been polite and straight to the point, and how much this kind of talk would be welcome within the House of Commons, where I'm sure she would give them all a good taste of honesty and show them how to do it. This article shows the extent Muslims will go to argue their point, they will not move from their stance, but neither will we when faced with intimidation and violence. I think the UAF show just as much violence against free speech as Muslims do, both are a danger we will have to face, I for one welcome these articles for they speak the truth and lots of the media have forgotten how to speak it, or are afraid to. Keep up the good work and keep free speech going, we will all benefit from your work in the end.