Sunday, 16th March 2008
1:38pm
I wrote yesterday about the attack on Canon Michael Ainsworth in his own east London churchyard by three ‘Asian’ youths. From the rather fuller stories about this incident in today’s papers, it is clear that this is far from the first such attack in the area. Indeed, there appear to have been many attacks on vicars or churches by Muslims who are clearly intent on turning east London into a no-go area for Christians (and, given the stoning of the Jewish group visiting the area on Holocaust Remembrance Day, for Jews as well. The mosque in the picture, by the way, was once St Sophia cathedral which was converted into a mosque on the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the fate of innumerable churches under Islamic conquest).
The jihadi nature of the attack on Canon Ainsworth, who was taken to hospital after being kicked and punched in the head when he asked three ‘Asian’ youths who had gathered in the churchyard of the ancient church of St George-in-the-East to quieten down, is unmistakeable. The
Mail on Sunday reports that the church
has regularly had windows smashed by youths - who on one occasion shouted: ‘This should not be a church, this should be a mosque.’…In another attack on the church, families were showered with glass when a brick was thrown through a window during a service. Mr Allan Ramanoop, a member of the Parochial Church Council, said often parishioners were too scared to challenge the gangs. The Asian church member, who lives nearby, said: ‘I've been physically threatened and verbally abused on the steps of the church.
On one occasion, youths shouted: “This should not be a church, this should be a mosque, you should not be here”. I just walked away from it - you are too frightened to challenge them. We have church windows smashed two to three times a month. The youths are anti-Christian.’ … The Reverend Alan Green, Area Dean for Tower Hamlets, said it was the latest in a series of ‘faith hate’ crimes in the borough… ‘There are one or two incidents of faith hate every month across the borough and across all faiths’.
The Sunday Telegraph further reported:
A survey of London clergy by National Churchwatch, which provides personal safety advice, found that nearly half said they had been attacked in the previous 12 months. The organisation suggested that vicars should consider taking off their dog collars when they are on their own.
Pinch yourself. This is Britain.
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Saturday, 15th March 2008
8:06pm
The article by David Mamet in which he reveals how he stopped being a brain dead liberal or leftie when he was finally mugged by reality contains the (for me) arresting observation:
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
Leaving aside the ability to write plays of international stature, along with a view of human nature that for me is too black (since I think people are capable of both good and evil), Mamet identifies one of the multitudinous and self-evident contradictions which prompted me to embark on my own 25-year headlong flight from Planet Kafka. Now
there’s the stuff of drama…
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8:01pm
Blink and you could have missed it. Today’s Daily Telegraph carried this tiny item (so insignificant is it considered to be that it doesn’t even seem to be on the Telegraph’s website):
A vicar was left seriously injured after he was attacked in his own churchyard by three Asian youths who taunted him about his Christianity. Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, needed hospital treatment after he was repeatedly hit in the face and body by the gang at St George-in-the-East church in Whitechapel, east London, on March 5. Police are treating the incident as a ‘faith-hate’ crime.
We know the faith that was the target of the hate. But which was the faith whose adherents were doing the hating? We all know, even though no-one is saying. Just as under Stalinism, we are now taking it for granted that we must read between the lines.
Doubtless this is yet further proof that the 'no-go areas’ about which the Bishop of Rochester recently warned, but which everyone else from Westminster to Lambeth Palace assured us were a figment of the Bishop’s imagination, don’t exist.
It so happens that Canon Ainsworth has in the past spoken up in public in defence of maintaining the integrity of Christian churches as places unique to Christian worship. In March 2006, giving evidence to the Commons Select Committee on Media, Culture and Sport, he replied to the suggestion that other religions might use churches as places for their own religious worship:
There are some issues about using Christian churches of all denominations for worship by other faiths but there is very extensive community use by other faith groups in many areas. That is something to be encouraged. If there is very clear evidence that other faith groups are actively looking to use church buildings for worship, and on the whole my experience is that they would prefer to have their own buildings, then that is something that will always be carefully and sympathetically considered but at the end of the day there must be an issue about other faith worship in a Christian church.
Was Canon Ainsworth actually targeted for attack?
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Sunday, 16th March 2008
7:46pm
For anyone who still thinks that Hamas is basically a social welfare organisation with a few nutty views; or for the many who believe (doubtless along with Jonathan Powell) that the civilised world should be talking to it; or for the yet greater numbers who think that the Arab civilians who died in the recent flare-up in Gaza were the victims of Israel, this clip of Hamas MP Fathi Hammad is necessary viewing.
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Saturday, 15th March 2008
7:40pm
Finally, America’s mainstream media starts to get the point about Barack Obama. The Wall Street Journal reports:
In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president…Considering this view of America, it's not surprising that in December Mr. Wright's church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement. In the church magazine, Trumpet, Mr. Wright spoke glowingly of the Nation of Islam leader. ‘His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening,’ Mr. Wright said of Mr. Farrakhan. ‘He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest.’ After Newsmax broke the story of the award to Farrakhan on Jan. 14, Mr. Obama issued a statement. However, Mr. Obama ignored the main point: that his minister and friend had spoken adoringly of Mr. Farrakhan, and that Mr. Wright's church was behind the award to the Nation of Islam leader.
You read it
here many votes ago…
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7:26pm
The ‘Bush/Blair lied, people died’ brigade swung into instantaneous knee-jerk action-replay when the Institute for Defence Analyses, a Defence Department funded body, reported on the results of screening more than 600,000 original captured documents and several thousand hours of audio and video footage from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which have been archived in a US Department of Defence database. Thus
Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie
said the
New York Times. Official US study denies Saddam had links with al-Qaida
said the
Guardian, going on:
A US military study officially acknowledged for the first time yesterday that Saddam Hussein had no direct ties to al-Qaida, undercutting the Bush administration's central case for war with Iraq.
But the actual
report doesn’t say that at all. Indeed, its reveals
the precise opposite. Although its executive summary states:
This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda
the body of the report finds significant evidence of highly pertinent indirect connections with al Qaeda affiliates. For example:
Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda-as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's longterm vision…A later memorandum from the same collection to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavoring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement its objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established. The IIS agent goes on to inform the Director that ‘this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.
…Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.
Woah! Read that one again! Saddam supported an organisation led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy! The abstract of the document explains:
Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term) considerable operational overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the regional groups involved in terrorism. This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.
Saddam and al Qaeda were not only recruiting from the same terrorist swamp, but it served Saddam’s pragmatic interests to make common cause. Indeed, in addition to providing evidence of actual links between Saddam and al Qaeda affiliates, the report destroys the ludicrous claim that Saddam would not have entertained such links with religious zealots since he was a ‘secular’ Muslim:
A much longer document from 1993… illuminates how the outwardly secular Saddam regime found common cause with terrorist groups who drew their inspiration from radical Islam…The document goes into great depth about Iraq's links to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and includes a memorandum, dated 8 February 1993, asking that movement to refrain from moving against the Egyptian government at that time.
There was also an
order from the Presidential Secretary to the IIS, directing a task for the Afghan Islamic Party
and the revelation that, in 2001, Iraq was
training Sudanese fighters inside Iraq.
Part of the mind-blowing rewriting of history that has taken place is the bizarre claim that Saddam not only had ‘no links’ with al Qaeda but had ‘no links’ with terrorism
at all. This report not only states:
Iraq was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism,
not only provides copious evidence of its links with international terrorism, but also provides the following from July 2002:
We hope for your opinion regarding how to destroy weapons in our embassy in London, which include seven Kalashnikov guns, nineteen other guns with ammunition belonging to them, and silencers.
What was that again about Saddam posing ‘no threat’ to Britain?
So far from
undercutting the Bush administration's central case for war with Iraq
this document in fact shows that Saddam was up to his neck in the Islamic jihad against the west and that therefore the case for removing him (quite apart from the legal case, which in my view was always sound) is thus well and truly proved.
The British and American media, however, have said the precise opposite. When will the shoe drop about these useful idiots, the Islamists’ most important strategic weapon against the west?
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Thursday, 13th March 2008
11:54pm
Further evidence of Muslims who are reacting as decent human beings to the barbarism carried out in the name of their faith. Mohammed Sifaoui is an Algerian who has courageously stood up to the Islamists. He had no hesitation describing them to Middle East Quarterly as fascists and, in respect of their intention to bring about the apocalypse by exterminating the entire Jewish people, even worse than the Nazis:
I certainly am one of the first Muslims to consider Islamism to be fascism. This is not a subjective decision but rather a serious, academic argument. Fascism and Islamism are comparable in many aspects: Fascism, without evoking all its particularities, bears similarities to trends also present in Islamism. I am, of course, making a reference to their will to exterminate the Jews. On this point, the Islamists may go even further in their doctrine than the Nazis did, considering that the end of the world could only occur when there are no Jews left on earth. In the three monotheist religions, apocalypse, end of the world, and doomsday exist and are liturgical events invested with a high degree of spirituality. Hence, the Islamists interpret the end of the world in a very special way. Whereas it is written nowhere in the Qur'an, exegetes describe the end of the world as the day when even the trees and rocks will be able to talk and tell the Muslims: ‘Come here, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’ And this would go on, until there would not be any Jew left on earth. This ideology is pure fascism.
MEQ: Are there other similarities?
Sifaoui: The will to exterminate or do harm to homosexuals is another similarity between Nazism and Islamism. The Islamists, also, say that they are the best community in the world, a superior race thanks to their beliefs. They use political means to arrive at this erroneous exegesis. I do not fear to call it fascism. And there are many more similarities between fascism and Islamism
Next, a Kuwaiti newspaper has published what for the Muslim world is unprecedentedly harsh criticism of the terror attack which killed eight students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. The Jerusalem Post reported:
‘The attack at the yeshiva was a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study,’ read an op-ed in the daily Al-Watan. ‘This odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah.’ The writer goes on to assert that ‘the terror attack must prompt the free world to comprehend the magnitude of terrorism and its threats and to realize that a clear and unequivocal stance must be assumed against it. There can be no negotiations with terrorism that indiscriminately aims itself at students, women and babies without any consideration for the means and the targets.’ Contrasting the terror attack with the IDF's operations in the Gaza Strip, the writer explains that ‘there is no link between a murderous terrorist act and the inadvertent killing of civilians in response to the firing of rockets by Hamas.’
Tell that to the British media!! Here therefore are two Muslims who have a far greater understanding of the nature of the threat that the world faces, as well as the moral distinction between mass murder and measures taken against it by the Israelis in self-defence, than does ‘informed’ opinion in Britain. Indeed, given Sifaoui's stark analysis of the Islamists' intention towards the Jews, the current carnival of Jew-hatred in Britain is beyond obscene. It is Muslims such as these who are in effect imploring the west to take a stand against Islamic fascism – and the blind and bigoted west which is refusing to do so, and dumping instead on its victims.
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Wednesday, 12th March 2008
2:15pm
Whatever the fate of the missing nine year-old Shannon Matthews, or the identity of the killer of 15 year-old Scarlett Keeling in Goa, can anyone doubt from listening to the interview this morning (0730) on the Today programme with Shannon’s mother Karen ( who boasts seven children by four different fathers) and stepfather Craig Meehan — in which they both batted away claims by members of the family that Shannon was an unhappy child who may have run away because Craig beat her -- or from the interviews with Scarlett’s mother Fiona McKeown, who is now up in arms because of questions being asked by the Goa police about how she could have left her fifteen year old daughter in Goa to fend for herself under the ‘supervision’ of her boyfriend and his aunt, that at a certain level in British society the most basic rules of nurture, parental duty and civilised values have gone down the tubes along with orderly family life?
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Friday, 14th March 2008
12:15pm
Amongst all those committed to truth, fairness and justice the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East continues to cause widespread dismay on account of its systematic distortion against Israel and credulous regurgitation of Arab propaganda. But now the American media monitoring organisation CAMERA says it has caught the BBC broadcasting an out-and-out lie. Last Friday, as the eight students who were murdered in the library of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem were being buried, BBC World broadcast an item in which reporter Nick Miles was heard to say:
In the hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his [the terrorist’s] family home. Later, his mourners set up Hamas and Islamic Jihad banners nearby.
But as
CAMERA points out, the terrorist’s house was not destroyed by Israeli bulldozers that day. Nor was it destroyed on any subsequent day. Indeed, as of yesterday it was still standing.
One of the central accusations hurled by Israel-bashers is that Israel destroys Arab homes as a form of ‘collective punishment’. The distorted way in which this charge is framed has played a major role in fomenting hatred of and murderous hysteria towards Israel. Now the BBC appears to have gone one stage further. It simply made it up.
UPDATE, MARCH 13: After Fox News broadcast an item on this false claim, the BBC today issued an on-air correction, as CAMERA reports:
To BBC's credit, Geeta Guru-Murthy has forthrightly corrected the original false demolition report on BBC World News, March 13 (seen on PBS at 8:25 AM EDT) as follows:
Now, we would like to clarify a report we heard at this hour last Friday about the attack by a Palestinian gunman on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem. In the report, the day after the attack, BBC World said that the gunman's home in east Jerusalem had been demolished by the Israeli authorities. That was not correct, and the images broadcast were of another demolition.
Still to be clarified are the underlying judgements and procedures that led the BBC to air this footage.
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Wednesday, 12th March 2008
11:52am
On Monday, I wrote in the Daily Mail that proposals for schoolchildren to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and other measures to be proposed by Lord Goldsmith to recreate a sense of shared national purpose were absurd irrelevancies when British national identity had been fragmented and all but destroyed by a cultural onslaught rooted in a profound loss of national self-belief. Yesterday, I received the following email from a British Muslim, which I reproduce as it was written:
I was reading your article in the DM which was left behind on the tube, regarding your views on allegiance. I don't but the DM you see.
I agree that we should not be asked to show allegiance to the Queen. After all the Queen doesn't have any real powers anyway. As a Muslim, why should I show allegiance to a non Muslim. Those who wish to show allegiance to her are welcome to do so. That's there business. IF I vote in the general elections, I don't show allegiance to the person I might vote for even if it's a Muslim politician.
As far as allegiance to the country, what does that mean? After all, if we obey the law isn't that enough? As a Muslim I feel I've done all that is required of me and can people stop telling me to go back to where I come from. I was born in Scotland, is that what they mean as I now live in England???
My allegiance is to the God of Adam\Noah\Abraham\Moses\Jesus\Muhammad peace and blessing of Allah be upon them.
There are of course some people such as the media and politicians who strive hard to allienate people from this country, particularly in regard to Islamphobic comments of which you have been a strong adherent for many years. I believe if people such as yourself were to be a bit more rational in your views and think clearly about some of the nonsense that you and others spout, that would make a greater contribution to obtaining cohesion within society. Having said that, I'm sure their are many people who see through your many hateful comments over the years. It's like taking painkillers, where after a time their affect reduces. Similarly your views are probably being ignored each time you open your mouth.
Over the past few months as I travel to work, I have been wearing the arab scarf, which by the way I have noticed non Muslims are also wearing, to show my identity as a Muslim. I never did that before. Hence I would say that the more you alienate people like me, the more stronger my identity, at least visually, will become. Anyone, including you who don't like it, can lump it. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. This is what sticks in the throat of people like you, and their is very little you CAN do to make me a Muslim change my way of life. This is what makes you say the hateful things you say. Not surprisingly in your article didn't fail in making a dig at Islam and Muslims. You are, if nothing else, consistently seethed in hate. There will be a Day of Judgement. I would like to be there when you are judged.
Allahu Akbar.
Says it all, doesn’t it? But this man does not speak for all British Muslims. Many would be horrified by this message. The problem is that people like him currently have the upper hand.
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