Admitting that he knew little about sharia law, Lord Phillips said he had taken advice in Oman and that as a result of this (clearly highly partial and inadequate) briefing he was able to state:

I understand that it is not the case that for a Muslim to lead his or her life in accordance with these principles

‘We, the Arab and Islamic community, gather here today to express our resentment at the celebrations by the Jewish community and the evil/noxious Jew in Britain’.

[والوبيل اليهودي في بريطانيا]

Translation by DaveM

A preliminary evaluation held by Jerusalem police on Wednesday found that three police officers had attempted to stop the driver before he was eventually shot dead by Special Patrol Unit officer Eli Mizrahi, who was dispatched to the scene on a motorbike. But a video of the final moments of the attack shows a soldier in civilian clothing shooting Dwayat from close range with a handgun while standing outside the cabin. Only then is Mizrahi seen firing a number of rounds into the slumped body of the terrorist.

Despite the fact that the Israeli press refers to the attacker as a terrorist, it is at present not clear whether his motives were indeed political or whether he simply ran amok for personal reasons. There is no suggestion that he was part of a terrorist organisation. He]]> 2008-07-03T12:26:38+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/795356/the-jihad-of-the-word.thtml

The signs have been ominous for some time but now it has become clear beyond a doubt that those who tell the truth about Islam, Islamism or Islamist terrorism risk having their career, livelihood and maybe even their liberty placed in jeopardy – and all in the name of human rights. In Canada, the columnist Mark Steyn has been arraigned before a kangaroo court for the crime of publishing in Macleans magazine an excerpt from his bestseller, America Alone, in which he argues that demographic change is turning Europe Islamic. Led by the Canadian Islamic Congress, Muslims have taken Steyn and Macleans to a ‘human rights’ tribunal on a charge of ‘hate speech’, a totalitarian statute enforced by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (sic) who are in the business of destroying the freedom to voice perfectly legitimate – indeed, absolutely vital and important – opinions about the need to defend western society against Islamist attack. Bad enough that Islamists browbeat and threaten people who express such opinions. For a body such as the CHRC to do their dirty work for them and act as the enforcers of the jihad against free]]> 2008-06-24T20:20:11+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/796306/a-caledonian-caliphate.thtml
This blog post was originally duplicated on the site. The duplicate has now been deleted and the comments from it moved over to this thread.

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, has been spectacularly canny and effective as Scotland’s first minister, moving his nationalist pieces across the British constitutional chessboard with stealth and skill. But there’s a dimension to this that has so far passed below the radar – the scimitar slung around the kilt. Tomorrow, the Scottish Islamic Foundation will be launched in Edinburgh in Salmond’s presence. But as the invaluable Centre for Social Cohesion tells us, the leading members of this group and many of those who lead its events are closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose aim is the Islamisation of Britain and Europe.

Its chief executive Osama Saeed, who has worked as Salmond’s researcher and is the SNP’s parliamentary candidate for Glasgow Central, is an Islamist and leading light in the Brotherhood front the Muslim Association of Britain. Saeed follows the usual Brotherhood line of promoting certain limited moderate positions, such as calling for an end to]]> 2008-06-25T10:55:10+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/811236/just-look-what-came-crawling-out.thtml
It seems that last Sunday’s demonstration in London celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversay has provoked a few scorpions to crawl out from under their stone. Harry’s Place reports this gem:

Here’s Mohammad Sawalha, President of the British Muslim Initiative, speaking to Al Jazeera in Arabic about his demonstration against last Sunday’s celebration of the foundation of the State of Israel:

The President of the British Muslim Initiative - Mohammad Sawalha - said in a speech to Al Jazeera:

“We, the Arab and Islamic community, gather here today to express our resentment at the celebrations by the Jewish community and the evil/noxious Jew in Britain”

[والوبيل اليهودي في بريطانيا] Translation by DaveM

Apart from the British Muslim Initiative, Sawalha has been active in a large number of other ventures. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of the IslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque: which was taken over from Abu Hamza by the Muslim Association of Britain, with the help of Detective Inspector

But for the Guardian and the BBC, the most important fact to note was that the bulldozer driver was then shot dead. The Guardian headlined its report

Man shot dead after Jerusalem bulldozer rampage

while the BBC, whose website report is currently headlined

Deadly Jerusalem bulldozer attack

initially ran the headline

Israel bulldozer driver shot dead.

This was captured by Honest Reporting which commented:

...this example offers further evidence of the BBC's mindset - the initial instinct to portray Israel as an aggressor and a Palestinian as a victim even if that Palestinian was actively involved in a terrorist attack against innocent civilians...The BBC's very own correspondent Tim Franks even witnessed much of the incident from his office window. The BBC can have no excuse for not having the basic facts of the story in front of them from the very beginning.

Question: when does a sealed border with one country cease to exist in the western media mind?

It is a source of great concern that far too many otherwise decent British people now refuse to believe that the British National Party is what it is -- a bunch of viciously racist and anti-Jewish bigots. The recent debacle in the Henley by-election, where the BNP did better than either the Labour party or UKIP , shows that it is now tapping into a disturbing level of support.

This is for two reasons. First, like all far right parties it opportunistically seizes upon genuine grievances that mainstream politicians will not address. At present these centre around the deliberate erosion of British national identity through unlimited immigration and a refusal to tackle the growing Islamisation of Britain. Mainstream liberal opinion holds that even to identify this as a problem is racist or ‘Islamophobic’. The result is that the truly racist BNP (which uses concern about Muslims to camouflage its real animosity against all Asians, people of colour and Jews) has seized upon these issues – with the further result that because it has done so, this ‘proves’ to the liberal classes that these issues are indeed racist. Which, of course, they]]> 2008-07-02T14:31:56+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/805576/this-england.thtml

From the Times:

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

One pupil who wrote ‘f*** off’ was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.

His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points... The chief examiner, who is responsible for standards in exams taken by 780,000 candidates and for training for 3,000 examiners, told The Times: ‘It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling.’