“It’s pretty clear that the NSS have lost their way, and now come across as an extremely bitter bunch of people railing against the religious in manner in which they would heap opprobrium if it was the other way round.”
Osama Saeed takes on Terry Sanderson and the NSS.
Help! It appears that “the very cultural stability of the Queen’s country is at stake, as the cries for Sharia ring louder and broader than ever” – according to Marc Sheppard, writing at The American Thinker, 2 March 2007
An £18 million mosque and community centre for Dudley has been thrown out against the advice of planning experts – but the battle will almost certainly continue with an appeal.
One man was arrested during scuffles outside the meeting to consider the plan which prompted the biggest protest campaign in memory.
Anti-mosque campaigners cheered after proposals for a £6 million mosque with 65ft minaret and £12 million community centre were rejected by all nine members of the planning committee. But chairman of Dudley Muslim Association Khurshid Ahmed today said the bid to build the mosque would almost certainly continue.
An anti-immigrant politician is making a meteoric rise with his call on the Dutch – once one of the most tolerant nations in the world – to stop Islam taking over Europe.
Geert Wilders, the 43-year-old leader of the Freedom Party, is convinced that governments are being forced to accommodate a “tsunami of Islamisation” that is fundamentally incompatible with European social values.
“Islam itself is the problem. Islam is a violent religion,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “The Prophet Mohammed was a violent man. The Koran is mostly a violent book. We should invest in Muslim people but they have to first get rid of half the Koran and half of their beliefs,” he said.
The Freedom Party has jumped from six to 10 per cent in opinion polls since November. His passionate campaign for a ban on the Islamic veil, or burqa, in public places is gaining such momentum that the country’s new coalition government could be forced to introduce the ban it does not support.
On the burqa, Mr Wilders is adamant: “It is a medieval token of a barbaric time, of how not to treat women, even if they want to wear it themselves,” he argues.
The Muslim Council of Britain’s new guidelines for schools can help pupils to feel fully and equally valued, argues Tahir Alam.
Barbara Hewson argues that allowing Muslim women to wear the veil in courtrooms is an affront to open justice and (you can hear this coming can’t you?) Enlightenment values:
“A critic of multiculturalism in the UK, Elie Barnavi, argues in the recent best-selling essay Les Religions Meurtrieres (Murderous Religions) that Europe needs to recall its own bitter experiences of religious extremism and religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in order to counter Islamic fundamentalism effectively today. Europe’s current separation of state and church reflects the triumph of Enlightenment values over religious rule, but it needs to defend those values against political religion vigorously, and not lapse into post-colonial guilt. This is important, if democracies are not to morph back into theocracies again.”
“Post-colonial guilt”, “Islamic fundamentalism” threatening to turn civilised European societies into “theocracies” – what is this, the Telegraph perhaps, or the Daily Mail? Nah, it’s from Spiked, the online journal run by the tendency which used to be the Revolutionary Communist Party but has since morphed into a bunch of right-wing libertarian individualists whose obvious natural home now is the Tory party.
In another Spiked article, Josie Appleton attacks the evil collectivist mayor of London Ken Livingstone, who is intent on suppressing the priceless individual freedom to drive round the capital in one’s 4×4 and destroy the environment in any way one sees fit. Appleton’s proposal that voters should consider removing Livingstone at the next mayoral election does, however, suffer from the small flaw that when they turn up at the polling booth “in two years’ time”, as she recommends, the election will have taken place ten months earlier.
David Aaronovitch explains why the West has a moral obligation to attack Muslim countries in order to bring them the benefits of western civilisation:
“A month ago I was invited to speak at an all-day event on ‘The Clash of Civilisations’ organised by the eccentric half of Ken Livingstone’s personality. Its purpose, as far as I could work out, was to promote cultural relativism by suggesting that anything that looked like telling foreigners what to do was some kind of mad imperialism. So we shouldn’t seek to export democracy, because it wouldn’t work and maybe they didn’t want it anyway, and it would end in a bloodbath or profits for Western companies, whichever you thought was worse….
“Others have argued, more extremely, that in some Islamist cultures women aren’t yearning for the right to education, or to be treated by (male) doctors, or to be anything except shut up in their father’s or husband’s houses…. The Western idea of freedom isn’t everything.
“I am well aware that nothing of the above argument makes what has happened in Iraq the less appalling. Hating the occupiers I could cope with, but I didn’t remotely foresee the insanity – the bloody aimlessness – of blowing up students or day-labourers, with Allah knows what long-term objective in mind. And we in the West can take from that experience the lesson of being careful in the way we intervene, of course. But not – not – that you shouldn’t do it. Not that there shouldn’t be moral foreign policies. Not that we think that democracy, basic human rights or liberty are relative values.”
For a critique of Aaronovitch’s article – “for Dave, it appears that the Iranians are dumb chattels, sitting around in leg irons and only capable of being liberated by a passing dashing British warship” – see
Aaronovitch Watch, 27 February 2007
The “civil war” is between secularism and Christianity, and Larry Siedentop is worried about it. He blames both sides for ignoring “the moral symmetry between secularism, with its civil liberty, and Christianity”.
After all, European secularism “rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the blind following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others. This is also the central, egalitarian moral insight of Christianity. It can be seen in St Paul’s contrast between ‘Christian liberty’ and observance of the Jewish law. Enforced belief was, for Paul, a contradiction in terms. Strikingly, in its first centuries Christianity spread by persuasion, not by force of arms – a contrast to the early spread of Islam.”
Siedentop outlines his central concern: “What will happen to this ‘civil war’ now that Europe is faced with the challenge of Islam? Will Europeans come to understand better the moral logic that joins Christianity and civil liberty? It is important that they do so….”
So, cutting through the waffle, the basic message is that secularists and Christians should bury the hatchet in order to resist the Muslims.
Hampstead & Highgate Express editor Geoff Martin has defended his decision to publish a comment from the British National Party on its front page after coming under attack from Camden Council.
Deputy Labour leader at the council and former executive member for equalities and community development Theo Blackwell wrote a letter of complaint for publication in the paper after a member of the far-right party, Peter [sic] Edwards, was quoted on the front page opposing an ethnic majority school’s decision to serve Halal food.
In his letter, Blackwell said: “BNP leader Nick Griffin must have a grin as wide as a Cheshire cat that the views of his party are given prominence in Camden by the Ham & High.
“The serious investigation undertaken by The Guardian into BNP entryism in North London before Christmas seems to have passed you by, as does the fact that another article in your paper noted the rise of anti-semitism in the area. As a borough, Camden has a strong track record on community cohesion and we hope you will join us and so many others in questioning the BNP’s relevance in this matter.
“Your editorial decision to give the BNP prominence was wrong and we strongly urge you to revisit your policy as a matter of urgency.”
Blackwell told Press Gazette: “There was no quote from Labour, Conservatives or Liberal Democrats; that would have showed balance. The BNP has no relevance in Camden as it is not represented here.”
A woman embroiled in a bitter debate about wearing the niqab said the Muslim community has a duty to educate people about its use.
Ayshah Ismail, a teacher from Preston Muslims Girls School, took up wearing the niqab last year. She argued for the use of the veil during a public forum in the Gulf State of Qatar which branded the veil “a barrier to integration in the West”.
The 24-year-old, from Frenchwood, blamed the controversy on “ignorance and media hype”. She said: “I started wearing the veil a year ago because it was a natural progression of my faith from my understanding of Islam. I’m not imposing it on anyone. It was about taking a leap of faith for me.”
Ayshah, who was invited to go to Qatar after speaking out about the veil at Stop The War rallies, added:
“As for people who say the veil is a barrier to integration I go to the gym, I work, I drive, I pay taxes – what else can I do to integrate myself? We need to teach people more about the niqab and some of that duty lies with the Muslim community. It is about compromise. We are living together so how about helping each other understand what we’re about? We are lucky in Britain we can be diverse and celebrate our differences.”
The forum’s heated discussion, which will be broadcast by BBC World Service, revealed 57% per cent of the audience there thought the niqab hindered integration in the West.
The Doha Debate programme will be broadcast on Saturday March 10 at 12.10pm and 8.10pm and on Sunday March 11 at 1.10am, 8.10am and 5.10pm.