BBC News - Salman Taseer: Thousands mourn Pakistan governor

When are people going to face up to what is before their eyes? Islam is a religion of violence and death, that eschews mercy, celebrates vengeance and advances by oppression and subjugation. History shows it, current affairs demonstrate it.

The governor - a senior member of the governing Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - had recently angered Islamists by appealing for a Christian woman, sentenced to death for blasphemy, to be pardoned.

Mr Gilani has declared three days of national mourning and appealed for calm.

The bodyguard, Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri, 26, was showered with rose petals by supporters as he appeared in court in Islamabad on Wednesday.

News reports carefully avoid naming Islam when reporting these things by speaking of “religious extremists” but this is inaccurate and misleading; indeed, these are weasel words. Whenever we see these reports they are Muslim Extremists. Muslims blowing up Christian churches, Muslims blowing up mosques and killing each other, Muslims bombing our cities and killing our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

When a Muslim leader stands up for what are called “liberal values” but what are actually “civilised values” Muslims far and wide go into their usual screaming fit of hysteria and he gets killed by his own bodyguard who, in turn, gets lauded and showered with rose petals as he appears in court.

There is no maturity, no reason, no civilised outlook and no mercy in Islam and it is time we demanded that Muslim Pakistan step up to the mark and prove itself capable of civilised involvement with the wider world. Time we stopped making excuses for a nuclear power with the mind and emotional maturity of a petulant child.

BBC News - Salman Taseer: Thousands mourn Pakistan governor

BBC News - Saudi school lessons in UK concern government

This barbaric stuff is being taught to children in the UK. This is what they learn about the world at their mother’s knee, at the mosque and in their schools. Summary, violent solutions to life’s problems and grotesque caricatures of the “other.” Do you think it is just the Jews, just the gay community they despise and demonise?

Even while they benefit from our civilised, Christian-based, liberal democracy they despise our culture and our “Western ways.” A so-called moderate Muslim is one who has been influenced by those ways and a fundamentalist Muslim, who regards the moderate as apostate, is one who has been influenced by the teachings of Islam through schools like this.

“One of the text books asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam - the answer given in the text book is "hellfire".

Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff.

In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.”

This is not a radical twisting of Islam – it is Islam. It is not, as the Saudis insist, shocking because it is taken out of context. The acceptable face if Islam we too readily buy into in the UK is out of context and this is Islam. It is ironic that the Saudis, who maintain oversight in these schools, should be anxious to distance themselves from this since they enforce and export Whahhabism, one of the most extreme, fundamentalist expressions of Islam.

BBC News - Saudi school lessons in UK concern government

Melanie Phillips’s Articles » I think, therefore I’m guilty

I am not her biggest fan but here is a superb commentary on the parlous state of UK society today, where freedom of speech is the preserve only of those approved by the thought police.

“It is difficult to say when, exactly, the priorities of the British police shifted from the prevention of criminal offences towards criminalising people for causing offence. The police have become the thin blue line against the Wrong Opinion. Instead of protecting society against oppression, British police officers have become the agents of oppression…

…if you are a white Christian man upholding traditional family values and expressing a desire to stop immigration and leave the EU, while being sceptical of man-made global warming and believing that Darwinian evolution does not explain the origin of life on earth, Britain is no longer your country.

But don’t worry. Utopia is taking its place. The police are on their way to tell you.”

Melanie Phillips’s Articles » I think, therefore I’m guilty

The Giant Islam Sleeps Lightly

The world’s attention is focussed on pastor Terry Jones in Florida who has declared his avowed intent to burn copies of the Koran on this, the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities in New York. It is sobering to think that a very little man, who leads a small and failing congregation of no more than fifty people - people who may be as small-minded, mean-spirited and contemptible as himself – can command such attention. In the world of the Internet and instant news, however, it seems almost inevitable.

But let’s not run away with the idea that this one man’s actions are as newsworthy as the press and media coverage he is getting might suggest. It is the fear, the very real fear of the reaction of the Islamic world that has brought this petty act to the fore.

There is no substantial support for what this man plans to do; it has been roundly condemned by political and religious leaders around the world; Christian voices, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, have been raised loudly denouncing this pointless act; all my Christian friends condemn him outright, indeed my American Christian friends condemn him. In light of which any reasonable person would mentally place Pastor Jones in the “wacky but what can you do” category and get on with their lives; not so Muslims.

In the Muslim world this act is defined as “A ferocious attack on Islam and Muslims” (al-Jazeera); There is talk of an uncontrollable Muslim response (al-Alam TV, Iran); there has been talk of “bloody wars and reprisals” (al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper); there are calls for the criminal court in the Hague to get involved (Qatari al-Watan newspaper) and the Jakarta Globe declared the American authorities “powerless” to stop the burning of the Muslim Holy Book.

Perhaps this last is an indication that not everyone understands the true nature and cost of democracy, that democracy means even the foolish can walk the streets without let or hindrance. You can read a digest of responses from the Arab world on the BBC US and Canada news site

Hysteria seems to define the character of Muslims brought up in those parts of the world we have come to identify as “Muslim countries”, although it is clear that it is as much underlying cultural influences as it is Islamic teaching that is to blame for such hysteria. Such cultural characteristics are exploited however by religious leaders and people are easily whipped up into a frenzy of vengeful and quite irrational and disproportionate expressions of rage. It sometimes seems like a population of petulant children who would be manageable if they didn’t have access to devastating weaponry that their temperament predisposes them to use without discrimination and on the slightest pretext.

It leads one to ask why, if Islam is such an important and positive cultural influence, so many of its adherents seem incapable of proportionate responses or reasoned reflection. Why they haven’t learned from this “great world religion” those values so characteristic of that other Middle Eastern religion, Christianity. Values so eloquently defined by Paul in his letter to Christians in the province of Galatia:

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, godliness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal.5:22)

It also raises the troubling question of how far the liberal democracies of the West, founded squarely on Christian principles of equity and freedom, can go down the road of appeasement and still keep its citizens safe. It is all well and good to beware we don’t wake the sleeping giant lest we provoke dreadful consequences, but if it takes one insignificant pastor of a church of just fifty people in Florida to evoke such responses as we have seen this week we urgently need a counter-response that declares loud and clear, “thus far and no further.” The truth is the giant Islam sleeps lightly and in that sleep continues to dream of conquest and subjugation.

The much misunderstood and misrepresented crusades of nine-hundred years ago were, contrary to popular belief, not an incursion into “Muslim territory” but an eleventh hour response by the political powers of Europe to a ferocious Muslim incursion that had swept out of the Arabian peninsula, across the Levant and North Africa with devastating effect. It had already arrived in the islands of the Mediterranean and settled in Southern Spain. Surely we can’t allow things to go so far and cost so much again.

But maybe by the time we sit down to count the cost of protecting our freedoms and values, the cost of appeasement, it will be found to be costly beyond our means. Then we will treat for peace and discover that Islam is no more gracious in victory than she is tempered and proportionate in response to slights and meaningless provocations.

BBC News - Duncan Smith considers incentives to relocate jobless

“Unemployed people living in council homes could be offered incentives to move to areas where there are jobs, the work and pensions secretary has said.”

It was only going to be a matter of time but even I am surprised at how quickly this Condem government has come around to Norman Tebbit’s way of thinking. And this old recidivist Tory policy has been dusted off and wheeled out by the acceptable face of Ian Duncan Smith (left). They have already started thinking of the disabled as benefit cheats and the old as retiring too early, now they are talking about the working population as work shy and feckless people who need to be encouraged to “get on your bike” and move across the country to find work. Their disdain for “the great unwashed” is palpable, shameful and all-too-typical.

And where are these jobs for which people should mount their bikes and ride? They are depending on the private sector taking up the slack but have absolutely no control over that and so no guarantee of a jobs market to which bikes may be confidently ridden.They have plans to savagely cut back on public services, throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of their jobs, swelling further the ranks of the unemployed and shrinking considerably the amount of money people have to spend.

With millions more unemployed, belts being tightened and significantly less money to spend in the country what on earth reason for hope can the private sector have in the prospects for growth and expansion? Why should they invest in a country that has more and more people out of work and less and less money to spend? In a shrinking market and a growing liability? But of course the next step in this grand design (Oh, the plan, the plan) is to get rid of the minimum wage so that those nice people at the CBI can bank on a growing population of slave labour.

I am reminded of that verse in Exodus which declares that “there arose a new king over Egypt, that did not know Joseph.” That king’s policies led to slavery for Israel. In the same way it might be said that a king arose in Downing Street about which this new generation knew nothing; but they will soon learn, they will soon learn. Welcome to the 1980’s, a place of individual wealth and collective poverty, of blaming the poor and celebrating the wealthy, of social Darwinism, a meritocracy in which only the strong survive.
BBC News - Duncan Smith considers incentives to relocate jobless

Christian preacher arrested by homosexual police officer for saying that homosexuality is a sin - CCFON.org - Christian Concern For Our Nation

Gays in uniform are now taking the law into their own hands. It is not enough that they are legal, they have to make anyone and everyone who disagrees with them illegal. They as fascist as any right-wing movement that defames and condemns them. Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens wrote:

‘The Public Order Act of 1986 was not meant to permit the arrest of Christian preachers in English towns for quoting from the Bible.  But it has.  The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was not meant to force public servants to approve of homosexuality.  But it has.

‘The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was not meant to lead to a state of affairs where it is increasingly dangerous to say anything critical about homosexuality.  But it did.

‘And the laws of Britain, being entirely based upon the Christian Bible, were not meant to be used by a sneering judge to declare that Christianity had no higher status in this ancient Christian civilisation than Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.

‘But it has come to that this week,’ he wrote.

‘We have travelled in almost no time from repression, through a brief moment of mutual tolerance, to a new repression.  And at the same time, the freedom of Christians to follow their beliefs in workplaces is under aggressive attack.’

Christian preacher arrested by homosexual police officer for saying that homosexuality is a sin - CCFON.org - Christian Concern For Our Nation

Life on Mars and PC Tact

“My name is Sam Tyler. I had an accident and I woke up in 1973. Am I mad, or in a comma, or back in time?” So says the voice of Sam Tyler, a 21st Century police officer, over the opening credits of the hit BBC TV drama series Life on Mars, first broadcast in January 2006. It ran to two series and was such a phenomenon it was followed up by another series, Ashes to Ashes, featuring another character, Alex Drake, this time thrown back to 1983 as the result of being shot in the line of duty.

Both meet the same characters “back then” and both suffer culture shock as they have to adapt not just to the more primitive policing methods but the customs and idiom of those very different times. Both series are packed with politically incorrect dialogue and assumptions as we follow the very un-PC Detective Inspector Gene Hunt and his team  in their efforts to keep the streets safe.

You can sympathise with the main characters’ impatience with and attempts at correcting unreformed police officers who call a deaf boy a “spastic”, who regard WPCs as being there to make the tea and be leered at, who make gags at the expense of black people and homosexuals and who regard criminals as deserving of “a good kicking.” Thank goodness for most of us the world isn’t like that anymore. But is it any better?

If roles were reversed and DI Gene Hunt were to wake up in 2010 how would he faire? Of course, he wouldn’t last five minutes because in that time he would have broken just about every anti-discrimination law in the country, not to mention health and safety. But what would he think of a world where a question from a pensioner about immigration becomes an international news story?

Where we allow our society to be slowly colonised by Muslims at the same time as we are at war with Muslim countries and Muslims are becoming suicide bombers on our streets – and we are not even allowed to talk about it for fear of being labelled Islamophobic?

What would he think of the proliferation of mosques across the country when young Muslims are being radicalised in some of those same mosques? Of the rise in popularity of the BNP and the real and frankly frightening prospect of Nick Griffin getting a seat in the British parliament and all because no one else is prepared to talk about the problems of immigration and he cashes in on that fact?

What would Gene Hunt make of a Britain where our libel laws are so wacky that “libel tourism” has become a major problem and Eastern European as well as other criminals, businessmen and politicians are flocking to our shores to sue investigative journalists who are getting too close to the facts? Where a journalist is guilty until proven innocent? Where foreign criminals are enslaving girls and running them as sex slaves in our towns and streets?

What would he make of a country where broadcast news is no longer news but tittle-tattle and gossip. Where the cult of celebrity puts no-talent nobodies on the front pages of our newspapers? Where news broadcasters do pieces to camera while the main event goes on behind them because they believe their comment and opinion is more valuable than those of the people who actually run the country, its businesses and services?

What would Gene Hunt think of a country where we are policed at a distance by cameras and are now the most scrutinised society after China and Russia? Where teachers run the real risk of being physically attacked, maligned on social networking sites, accused of abuse and little or nothing to be done because we are currently in the grip of the cult of the child? Where having a baby is regarded by some as a career move and others as an occupational hazard? Where aborting a baby is considered so inconsequential that it is possible to do it in your lunch break, like going for a dump?

How would he faire in this brave new world where we are all so PC, not because it makes for a better world but because of some misplaced guilt over our patriarchal history of empire that makes us feel we have to be the world’s social worker and “understand” how hard it must be having been our victims? Where we are actually implicated in charges of torture along with our “special friends” and war allies? Where right and wrong are defined not by agreed standards of decency and morality but by who has the money to sue you if you don’t toe the line they draw and dare you to cross, those who cry, “its our world now so have a care how you walk in it or we will have you for dinner!”

There have always been problems and each generation must find its own way to deal with them but the one “solution” that must be avoided like the jaws of hell is the one that insists, like Basil Fawltey, “Don’t mention the war (or immigration, or abortion, or over-surveillance, or Islamification)!” If we can’t express our views, share our fears and hopes, declare our convictions and speak our minds without fear of retribution and the PC brigade then we are storing up problems that may explode in a reaction of violence that we neither want nor can fully realise until it is too late.

George Orwell said, “Liberty is the freedom to tell people what they don’t want to hear.” That liberty is in real danger in Britain and while we are all arguing terms on what terms we can use in public discourse and private conversation there are those with a very different agenda planning our future and that of our children. Maybe we need a Gene Hunt to share with us some well overdue home truths and perhaps it doesn’t matter too much in what terms as long as we face them.

Yes, it is a different world and in some ways the changes are welcome, but is it really a better world? I don’t think so.

Gay marriage plan threatens churches says Bishop of Winchester -Times Online

So here’s the deal. Gay people insist on the right to marry. I don’t think it is meaningfully possible and object on social and religious grounds. But we live in a liberal democracy so I can hardly deny others the privilege that democracy affords me. But that is not enough – it never is. They want enshrined in law the right to marry in religious premises. Of course, there are already those liberal churches that afford this privilege without legal coercion but that is not enough – it never is. So the final situation stands something like this:

You have no right to force me as a gay person to comply with your religious code but I want enshrined in law the right to force you to act against your religious conscience. Nice!

‘Church of England clergy will be sued for discrimination if they refuse to “marry” homosexuals under a proposed law, a bishop has warned. Other religious leaders fear that churches that refuse to bless civil partnerships might be forced to close…

Don Horrocks, of the [Evangelical] alliance, said: “We understand the Lords’ desire to allow a few liberal religious groups to have freedom to follow their consciences. But other religious groups must not be forced to betray their consciences by facing lawsuits if they fail to allow a civil ceremony.

“This amendment hugely confuses the distinction between civil secular ceremonies and religious ceremonies, as well as the nature of marriage, and has major implications for the UK’s matrimonial laws which haven’t begun to be thought through.”’

Now this is going to upset some people I know personally but it has to be said. It is never enough, whatever you do to enshrine gay rights in law, it is never going to be enough.

In the UK there are calls for all kinds of “traditional” gay activities to be acceptable and legally protected now that basic gay rights are recognised. This includes the right to participate in cruising, the frequenting of public places for the purposes of casual sex – see here. It seems some wish to be free to liaise in places like the infamous Highgate Cemetery for instance without let or hindrance (shades of Joe Orton)

What next? The right to organise and participate in cottaging? As a young man I was more than once the target of such activities and I can tell you it is not the happy-go-lucky and wholesome activity some might have you believe. But this is the way it is going as the gay programme embraces any and all sexual activities once considered aberrant and wrong. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender movement (LGBT) is vocal and growing in its call for the acceptance of any and everything that would overturn the accepted and traditional mores and customs of society. Likeminded people gathering around a common cause, or an example of my enemy’s enemy is my friend?Sociologist Mary Bernstein said:

"For the lesbian and gay movement, then, cultural goals include (but are not limited to) challenging dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity, homophobia, and the primacy of the gendered heterosexual nuclear family (heteronormativity). Political goals include changing laws and policies in order to gain new rights, benefits, and protections from harm." (Bernstein, Mary (2002). Identities and Politics: Toward a Historical Understanding of the Lesbian and Gay Movement. Social Science History 26:3 (fall 2002).

The “cause” is anarchic then and not simply about being accepted but about creating a social chaos out of which this new, promiscuous order will rise. Promiscuous?

There are faithful and good people who remain in gay relationships for a lifetime, this I know personally. But casual and promiscuous sex seem to be the overwhelming norm in the gay community. So, on one hand you have people that seek, reasonably in many eyes, to be accepted in homosexual relationship as equals in the wider society with heterosexual partnerships. But then you have many in that same community seeking to have the same wider society give licence for their promiscuous agenda.

Of course, when such concerns are expressed we are met with the same cry - “Homophobia!” Its a lot like talking to a Mormon who will cry “Anti-Mormon!” But crying foul and damning your critics as blind and ill-informed enemies hardly helps to move the discussion along and does nothing to address the genuine fears and concerns of intelligent people.

Gay marriage plan threatens churches says Bishop of Winchester -Times Online

BBC News - BNP votes to ditch whites-only membership rule

Imagine that!  Having to be equitable and inclusive in a liberal democracy. I think Black and Asian people should join in droves, achieve a majority voting block and vote the BNP out of existence.

The British National Party has voted to scrap its whites-only membership rules after an extraordinary general meeting.

Members who had gathered in Essex voted to amend the party's constitution to let black and Asian people join.

The BNP had been threatened with a possible court injunction over its whites-only membership policy by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Now, if I had a party I would include everyone, take them to the movies, buy them popcorn and Ben and Jerry’s and tell them funny stories. Takes all sorts I suppose.

BBC News - BNP votes to ditch whites-only membership rule

BBC News - Muslim protester denies plan to upset Luton parade

Muslims desecrated the proud occasion when  the Royal Anglian Regiment marched through Luton town centre at a homecoming parade on 10 March last year. As British citizens expressed their pride and gratitude to brave British troops a group of Muslims hurled abuse and insults, calling them murderers and baby-killers.

“A Muslim protester accused of calling soldiers murderers at a parade claims he did not intend to upset anyone.

Munim Abdul told Luton magistrates he did not expect to cause offence because his group had spoken ‘the truth’.”

Their defence is that if its the truth then it is not abuse. Remember this the next time you hear an hysterical Muslim crying “Islamophobia”; if it is the truth then it is not abuse and therefore not a prejudice. Here are some truths about Islam which I hope will cause no offence because their true.

You will hear people declare that Islam is a peaceful religion and that “Islam means peace!” This is not the truth. Islam means submission and even if you submit to Islam there is little chance of peace since within 50 years of the prophets death Muslims were at each other’s throats and have been murdering each other ever since. Have you ever wondered why Muslims would blow up Mosques?

It is a fact that not all Muslims are terrorists but the majority of terrorists are Muslims (read who said it here). Islam is historically, culturally and temperamentally a vanquishing and subjugating religion. The Christian Crusades are a complicated historical phenomenon but make no mistake they were a response to a violent Islam that fought and butchered its way to the South Iberian Peninsula and posed a real and present threat to Christian Europe. Many of the countries and communities we today regard as Muslim were, in fact, Christian and only became Muslim by conquest. Eastwards, Islam warred its way as far as SE Asia in the same way. Ask the Hindu how he sees the history of Islam on the Indian continent.

Of course, any religion is a mix of dogmas, cultures, traditions and other influences. That is why it is quite reasonable to say that my Muslim neighbour and yours are decent, peace-loving people whose concerns in life are common enough, family, security, community, etc. But does he share our values because of his religion or in spite of his religion?

Jesus told his disciples to “Go into all the world and tell the Good News to all creation” (Mark 16:15) He said “But I say to you, do not resist evil, but whoever shall strike you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” (Matthew 5:39)

Muhammad declared, “Against [the unbelievers] make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of God and your enemies, and others besides, who ye may know, but whom God doth not” (Q 8:59-60)

This Muslim group have abused the very freedoms fought for by those soldiers, freedoms not available under Muslim rule. We must welcome the stranger and proffer our hospitality and those who seek to live among us, as one of us, are welcome to adopt and embrace our values. However, those who seek security in the notion that, if you concede a little territory, accommodate a little sharia,  allow cultural ghettos in the name of peace and liberal values then all will be well, are tragically mistaken. Remember the fable of the camel's nose:

One cold night, as an Arab sat in his tent, a camel gently thrust his nose under the flap and looked in. "Master," he said, "let me put my nose in your tent. It's cold and stormy out here." "By all means," said the Arab, "and welcome" as he turned over and went to sleep.

A little later the Arab awoke to find that the camel had not only put his nose in the tent but his head and neck also. The camel, who had been turning his head from side to side, said, "I will take but little more room if I place my forelegs within the tent. It is difficult standing out here." "Yes, you may put your forelegs within," said the Arab, moving a little to make room, for the tent was small.

Finally, the camel said, "May I not stand wholly inside? I keep the tent open by standing as I do." "Yes, yes," said the Arab. "Come wholly inside. Perhaps it will be better for both of us." So the camel crowded in. The Arab with difficulty in the crowded quarters again went to sleep. When he woke up the next time, he was outside in the cold and the camel had the tent to himself.

BBC News - Muslim protester denies plan to upset Luton parade

BBC NEWS | Education | Warning over narcissistic pupils

You begin with a wacky liberal creed that insists the only lifestyle  worthy of the name is "alternative". You marginalise and then demonise traditional values and make the family irrelevant. Then you "celebrate" alternative as though it is orthodox, the more alternative the more orthodox, and, having undermined so much that contributes to the health and well-being  of our children, you make it the business of the schools and other agencies to pick up the pieces. This story is truly troubling.

The growing expectation placed on schools and parents to boost pupils' self-esteem is breeding a generation of narcissists, an expert has warned.

Dr Carol Craig said children were being over-praised and were developing an "all about me" mentality.

BBC NEWS | Education | Warning over narcissistic pupils