Anyone who thinks that an Islamic takeover of the Western world is a serious threat is a maniac and should be sedated, obviously.
But on the plus side, if their predictions were to come to pass, the relevant bigots would certainly be first in line for decapitation… I’d pay good money to watch these cunts get their heads chopped off.
Good god. I thought I might be gently admonishing the hyperbole but that article is qutie the most disgusting thing I’ve seen this month, including the George Galloway porn link. It is pure and simple sub-Protocols ranting with "World Jewry" replaced by "Islam". I actually think that if you printed that off and persistently distributed it in the UK, you could end up in jail. And I’m not entirely sure that you wouldn’t deserve it.
The Protocols are a fabrication dsquared.
The really frightening thing is that a relatively large number of people actually *believe* it, word for word.
Anti-Semitism is back with avengeance, the French government refuses to classify Hamas as a terror group, Britain is banning robust criticism of Islam, people who speak out for traditional Dutch liberalism are murdered in the streets of the Netherlands and Canada is introducing ‘voluntary’ sharia law for civil cases like divorce for Muslims. This is a direct result of mass importation of people from a part of the world where such medievalism is normal and moral. If you deny this, or want more of it, or will tolerate more of it rather than cut back on immigration, you are the [insert swear word of the day and adolescent fantasy of violence here]. Whether or not Europe goes majority Muslim – and I don’t see it happening in my lifetime – it has already gone too far in that direction.
Peter, isn’t Britain strictly speaking banning incitement to hatred against members of all religions? I dunno about the other examples you’ve cited, and I don’t actually agree with anything that considers religion more important than any other random opinion, but it’s not all that accurate to imply that Islam’s being singled out as special there.
Islam’s also lacking the state protection afforded by, say, the blasphemy laws in favour of the Church of England.
Lorna,
Do you agree there are qualitative differences between a fabricated anti-semitic conspiracy used to smear (and worse) Jews and an openly stated desired to spread Islam over the world world (which I agree is not likely to happen) and which for some extremists includes violence like that seen in Madrid and New York?
Eric, it’s certainly not necessary to think many British Muslims do believe in that especially, either. I don’t. I just think it’s natural that if immigrants grow up in a part of the world where all authority tells you that Jews are equivalent to apes, women are second-class citizens, homosexuals should be murdered etc. then plenty are likely to retain those values when they move abroad, and vote accordingly. Liberal democratic societies have a right to defend their basic values, but instead we’ve already moved too far in the wrong direction in terms of accommodating ourselves to theirs.
"Do you agree there are qualitative differences between a fabricated anti-semitic conspiracy used to smear (and worse) Jews and an openly stated desired to spread Islam over the world world (which I agree is not likely to happen) and which for some extremists includes violence like that seen in Madrid and New York?"
There are qualitative differences in that the Protocols were fabricated whereas a few Muslims do desire to spread Islam across the world (I think ‘not likely to happen’ is understating somewhat, to put it mildly, but anyway…). However, I don’t see any qualitative difference between the anti-semitic conspiracy theorists who cited the Protocols, and articles by the likes of Watkins, because both are desperately scrabbling around for facts to fit their conclusions, and their conclusions have equally unpleasant implications for what the others think should be done to the followers of the respective religions.
Aside from being clumsily written, that last sentence should have said ‘the authors’, not ‘the others’. Hopefully the point is clear enough…
Eric, there were quite a few Jewish members of Communist Parties. That fact does not, and ought not to have, legitimated hatred against Jews. Nice to see your right-wing swing continuing. Incapable of standing up to the rhetoric of hate.
"Do you agree there are qualitative differences between a fabricated anti-semitic conspiracy used to smear (and worse) Jews and an openly stated desired to spread Islam over the world world (which I agree is not likely to happen) and which for some extremists includes violence like that seen in Madrid and New York?"
The fact that the Protocols are a fabrication makes no difference to anything. I’m an atheist, so as far as I’m concerned the Koran is a fabrication, as is the Bible. What’s being fabricated in the articles John linked to is a plot to enslave the world adhered to monolithically by vast numbers of Arab Muslims. And I bet there are a lot more people who believe in this fabrication than there are Muslims intent on world domination.
How much of a threat do you actually believe this is? You’re tresponse is akin to somebody saying "I know the protocols were fabricated, but you’ve got to watch those Jews."
Can I get this clear, Eric? Do you believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy of Muslims to take over the world? Do you believe that Europe or the UK have fallen under the control of this conspiracy? Answers appreciated in the form of a numbered list, "yes" and "no".
Eric, how the hell did you get there from what I actually wrote and the specific bit of Peter’s comment it was in response to? ‘Cos about all it’s got in common with your question is the keyword "Islam".
dsquared, why does it require a conspiracy? All that has been said is that given the chance, plenty – though certainly not all – people who move to Europe from the Middle East are going to vote, according to their values, to make the West more like the societies we know in the Islamic world. You’d have to be a conspiracy theorist not to believe that, frankly: to think that beneath our noses Muslims have moved to Europe en masse for generations who in aggregate share identical values to those of the societies they moved to – and all without anyone here noticing that these Muslims are incredibly liberal compared to the rest of the Islamic world.
Is it because what I have just said is so obviously true that people like yourselves and John B always argue back as if you’re responding to wild conspiracies?
Dsquared,
I do not believe there is a worldwide conpiracy for Islam to take over the world.
I believe there is an declared open war between a group of totalitarian extremists, whose idealogy is based on a particular brand of Islam, against liberal democracy.
Comparing this to the fabricated Protocols of Zion, which is a fiction made to slur the Jews is utterly offensive.
I will not fit my answers with a simple yes or no, since you are attempting, as John B does often, to suggest that anybody who suggests that there is a form of Islamism that is bent on world domination is a racist.
I do not for one minute think they stand a cat in hell’s chance of succeeding (See my post at drink soaked trots), not least because throughout the Middle East Democracy has more support from ordinary people, than it does in the West. That does not mean they should not be opposed.
Stop building up strawmen to topple. I have had more sensible discussions about this issue with Muslims, including ones moving back to Afghanistan, than I have seen on this blog, they certainly do not see themselves as BNP members for being concerned about the issue. Certainly, I do not expect to she them launching rocket grenades at Mosques wearing their Calvin Klein Hijabs.
So fuck off Dsquared with pathetic games and keep on propagandising for Mugabee or the next fashionable stance you find.
Dismal.
I know, apologising for Mugabee’s clearances is a new low point for him.
I’m glad you agree.
Even the Socialist Worker is willing to accept that <A href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6837>Mugabee is out of line.
Now tell me why I’m a racist for being differentiating between the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful citizens and the loons who want to establish a Caliphate via violent action? It seems to be that such a differentiation is extremely important, so that racists like the BNP cannot smear the whole community.
I am quite willing to accept that the site John links to may be "little green footballs" in nature (a site I have a policy of not linking on principle), but the fingers in ears "la la la la"ing of John B and Dsquared’s Jewish conspiracy theory comparison are utterly ludricrous.
The Jewish conspiracy theory comparison is not ludicrous. When referring to the linked articles, it is precise and accurate. This is a thread about those articles. The authors of those articles do not ‘differentiate’ as you do between ‘the vast majority’ of Muslims who are peaceful citizens and the ‘tiny minority’ who are blah blah blah, so I don’t know why you have a problem with the condemnations above.
Because the Protocols of Zion has absolutely no basis in fact, there is no minority of Jews who wish to carry them out.
Do you not get this or are you terminally stupid?
It is absolutely outrageous to raise it as an issue in this context, and says something about the mind of the person who did so that it is the first thing they reach for.
Oh for fuck’s sake. The post, and dsquared’s reponse, was not about the respective authenticity of the Protocols and Al-Q’aida. It was about two articles which made the claim that ‘Muslims’ – generically, not the extremists – are seeking world domination and subjugation of non-Muslims. It didn’t say "a minority of extremists", it said "Muslims". It is therefore both false, and a conspiracy theory comparable to the anti-semitic theories in the past and present asserting that Jews were seeking to take over the world.
It ‘says something about the mind of a person’ that they get more upset about a few angry remarks directed at transparent bigots, than they do about the transparent bigots. And the something it says is not very pretty at all.
I get mad at both Simon, don’t you?
Come out and say what you mean.
If you think I’m a racist say it.
I’d like to see your factual basis for such an assertion.
"…throughout the Middle East Democracy has more support from ordinary people, than it does in the West…"
Christ on a fucking bike. You lot have really lost it.
No, I don’t think you’re a racist, and I regret if my last post carried a different implication. You have, though, got far more angry at the idea that these articles might resemble classical anti-semitic conspiracy theories, then you have about the articles themselves. I think that indicates an odd set of priorities.
Jamie,
Go and read the UN Arab development Report 2003. Specifically this section.
Support for democracy and rejection of authoritarian rule is higher than any other region, including Europe.
You find that surprising?
"Support for democracy and rejection of authoritarian rule is higher than any other region, including Europe.
"You find that surprising?"
Yes, I do. Though not as much as I’m surprised by the statistic that fewer than 40% of those survey in the USA/Canada/Australia/NZ think democracy is the best form of government.
If you want me to come out and say it, I think there’s something wrong with that survey. Was there an alternative form of government proposed, such as a "Free Beer-ocracy" which would appeal to Europeans and many in former colonies, but not to followers of Islam? Because if there wasn’t, that survey makes no sense.
I suppose I should clarify. I don’t mean by that that I don’t believe Muslims and Arabs can’t believe in democracy, merely that I believe that most people (amywhere in the world) will go with the status quo. You live in a democracy, you answer "Democracy." You live in a monarchy, you say "Monarchy." And so forth.
I believe that most people (amywhere in the world) will go with the status quo.
No, no – it’s the opposite. So, if you live in a democracy, you want a dictator to come along and sort things out, bring some order. Why else do you think democratic elections throw up authoritarian lunatics like Blair and Bush, or Thatcher and Reagan, or Putin and Chirac?
Look, if you live in a democracy you probably undervalue it because you haven’t lived under a repressive regime – hence the phenomena of whinging nilhlistic Guardianistas worried about Blair becoming a fascist authoritarian. Those who do live under such repressive regimes will value democracy more (it is the nature of repressive regimes that they are generally not chosen by the popular will of the people).
Peter writes:
> plenty – though certainly not all – people
> who move to Europe from the Middle East are
> going to vote, according to their values
> to make the West more like the societies
> we know in the Islamic world.
>
That’s pure speculation. And not necessarily very coherent speculation at that. If you state the precise opposite:
> plenty – though certainly not all – people
> who move to Europe from the Middle East are
> going to vote, according to their values
> to make the West *less* like the societies
> we know in the Islamic world.
>
> After all, they chose to leave those
> societies for a new life in Europe.
>
From personal experience I can assure you that moving from one continent to another is an extremely difficult thing to do. People who do it, do it precisely because they want or need a change.
I’m not suggesting that my version of the speculation is The Correct One. Merely that it makes just as much sense as Peter’s version. So neither can really be used to justify a position.
Of course Islam poses no threat to the West.Thankfully the biggest threat Islam poses is to Muslims and the best service you can render a Muslim is to liberate him( or more interestingly,her) from that so-called religion. Their tautological ‘Allah-hu akbar’is a choice example of Muslim intellectual clarity.
Wow, that’s a pretty full-on site you’ve linked to there rebbiker. Do you actually agree with any of that nauseating hate-mongering? Or are you being satirical and illustrating the lack of "intellectual clarity" in fundamentalists of any shade?
Because when you link to a site which claims "niggers are not human" in a message decrying the intellectual clarity of others… well that makes an interesting point all it’s own.
Interesting it’s on a Russian server . . .. But then they’ll allow anything, just cash up front please.
I wouldnt hesitate to use Congoids for medical experiments, although rats display superior group strategy.What may be an interesting point to you, Mr Bliss ,could be a blinding flash of the obvious to smarter people.
‘Cash up front please’ is a sound economic principle which incorporates the advantage of not ending up in hock to Red Sea Pedestrian userers like your phonetic jailbird namesake.There are no ‘Russian’ oligarchs, just Kikes.
YAAT, obviously.
Eric, you seem to be saying, "The grass is always greener": people in democracies want other systems, while those in dictatorships want democracy. I’m not persuaded.
Whatever you may think of Guardian-readers, there is no way they account for 60% of the electorate in the US/Canada/Australia/NZ. I want to know what that 60% prefer to democracy, because I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who wanted to overthrow any of the governments of those coutries (though all could use periodic kicks up the ass). To make my position as clear as I can: if a survey says 60% in the US dislike democracy, that survey is garbage.
Oh, and John, it’s your site and everything, but I think our anti-Semite, racist friend is a few miles over the line of decency, and if you don’t do something, you’re just going to see some very unpleasant flame wars. (That’s not about Eric.)
"What may be an interesting point to you, Mr Bliss, could be a blinding flash of the obvious to smarter people."
Indeed rebbiker. But in this case the "interesting point" I was referring to is that you’re a complete fucking moron. Get an adult to read my previous message and explain it to you.
I agree with Dave about rebbiker John. I think you ought to block him posting and stop his links working – given the material the site contains.
Jim,
Don’t argue with him, it is not worth it.
I don’t like deleting comments (haven’t yet deleted anything other than spam and duplicates), and don’t believe that viewing Rebikker’s site is going to have any impact other than making people think that Rebikker is a fuckwit (it’s hardly insiduous enough that anyone’s going to read it and think ‘oh yeah, black people are rubbish, aren’t they? Think I might go and kill some’).
But if people fancy not responding to him going forward, that would probably be good.
Dave,
I looked at the World Values Survey. It’s very hard to get results anything like that. To Q.163, "Democracy may have problems but it’s better than any other form of government" (which is the question most close to the one in the UN survey) 49.3% of Americans strongly agree, and 41.3% agree.
The only thing I can imagine is the table shows only those who ‘strongly agree’, not ‘agree’.
Eric, if you ask someone to "stop setting up strawmen" in one sentence and then accuse him of "propagandising for Mugabee" in the next, your own credibility is going to suffer a bit. I think that, given that you actually do believe that there are a small number of Muslims who want to destroy the Western way of life and that decadent leftwing intellectuals like me are blind to the danger, asking you if you believed in "a conspiracy" was a pretty fair question to ask. It’s also not "absolutely outrageous" to raise the fact that the language of Mr Watkins’ essay was very similar to the language used by anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists around the turn of the century (and indeed, still used by anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists in the Arab world today). I think you’re allowing your personal dislike for me to cloud your judgement here.
I delete Rebikker’s links from my site. Don’t mind anyone visiting them, but I do mind Google’s robots associating them with me.
To answer Lorna’s point, way back up there…. The UK’s Christian-protecting blasphemy laws are much the same as the laws dictating that London cabbies have to carry a bale of straw in the boot when in the City, to feed the horse: out of date and universally ignored. (I’m not sure, but I think they may have been jury nullified; if not, certainly freedom of religious and anti-religious speech in Britain was established by jury nullification, making whatever laws may be on the books effectively unusable, and making the act of officially revoking them a waste of parliamentary time.) Because British Christians have spent the last century or so in an environment in which their religion is not afforded special legal protection, it never occurs to them to use it. The whole concept of blasphemy is a bit out of kilter with Jewish thinking these days (I am informed by an observant friend), so the only groups in the UK who will use the new laws are Muslims, possibly Sikhs (judging by recent demonstrations against theatres) and maybe Hindus (I freely admit I don’t know a damn thing about Hindus’ attitudes to blasphemy, so I’m just hedging my bets on that last one). Within those groups, we know that reasonable, civilised people, who respect British culture and traditions, are unlikely to use the courts to punish blasphemers. So that leaves us with the intolerant extremist maniacs. In short, this law was passed by politicians who knew full well that, while it may officially protect all religions, it’ll only ever be invoked by extremist Muslims of the Rushdie-killing variety — it was, in fact, the Rushdie-would-be-killers who first demanded that Britain’s blasphemy laws be extended from Christianity to all religions, and now they’ve got what they want. There’ll be the occasional prosecution against Rangers or Celtic supporters, to keep up a semblance of fairness, but this is basically a law for Wahhabists.
Squander Two, I’m not a fan of protecting religious belief by law. But it’s not fair to imply (as you do) that the Christian Blasphemy law has been ignored for a century or more.
The last successful prosecution using the Blasphemy Law was in 1977. Which, while pre-interweb, is hardly ancient history.
Though Jim is right that the last successful blasphemy prosecution was in 1977, the blasphemy laws were also invoked much more recently as a justification for the British Board of Film Classification refusing a certificate to (and thus effectively banning) a video called Visions of Ecstasy – a decision upheld all the way up to the European Court, whose 1994 ruling is summarised here.
Jim,
I stand corrected. I had no idea anyone was still bothering with such crap that recently. There’s always one.
Still, how many prosecutions were there between, say, 1945 and 1977? And do we think the rate of prosecutions on behalf of aggrieved Wahhabists under the new law will be similar to or higher than that?
John B
Are you going to put an argument forward for your moral indignation, or is that it?
If you need an explanation for why the likes of Rebbiker and Neverdock are appalling, I’m disinclined to engage in conversation with you.
I don’t know, Squander Two, how often the Blasphemy Law has been used successfully since 1945. But even if Mary Whitehouse’s case in 1977 was the only instance since the war (it wasn’t by the way; I know of one other case in the 60s and I’m certain there have been others… albeit very few no doubt) that’s not; if I may say; a coherent argument against placing all religions on an equal footing under the law.
Let me reiterate that I am against this Incitement legislation. It’s vitally important you don’t mistake this for an argument in favour of the law (because it’s not). However there is – as I see it – a serious social problem that needs to be addressed. This law is an attempt to address it. It’s a bad attempt, but I’m honestly unsure as to what better approach there might be.
The dilemma, as I see it, is a simple one. Christianity is indeed protected by law; and pointing out the law is used infrequently isn’t a good argument in favour of inequality under it. Similarly jews are protected by the incitement to racial hatred legislation (as are Sikhs incidentally).
This leaves out a lot of us… atheists, buddhists, pagans, moslems, satanists, hindus, etc etc.
However, in the current cultural context it’s naive (or a deliberate misunderstanding) to deny that Islam is a special case amongst the "excluded faiths". There is (at least perceived to be) an opposition between Islam and Christianity on the one hand, and Islam and Judaism on the other. This is often cast as an opposition between Islam and Judeo-Christianity; though as rebikker illustrates there’s hardly universal love between Jewish and Christian culture.
So the issue, to me, is that a significant minority of the British population (one with a strong cultural identity) can – with good reason – feel that they are being discriminated against by a legal system willing to protect christians and jews but not them.
This is something I believe badly needs to be addressed. Such inequality can only work to increase friction within and between communities and provide extremists with a recruiting device.
Again, let me make clear, I am against this law. But I don’t know how else to address this dangerous (in my view) injustice.
Wahhabists won’t be able to bring prosecutions – only the Attorney General – assuming that he is not a closet Wahhabist. Are you positing some kind of EUrabia theory that our government is a conspiracy to Islamacise Britain?
It is difficult to get from this law (however ill-thought out it may be) to Wahhabists controlling speech in Britain without using some kind of dangerous and aevidential theory much like those that argue that Jews control the world.
Not to get into the other argument – but just a bit of background about the blasphemy thing. The ’77 case was a bit of an aberration even then, and the judgement was a surprise. With a nice bit of historic irony, I seem to recall that the judge in the case was Lord Scarman.
S2’s basically right though – it’s not a live issue, all the more so since the Human Rights Act. But the blasphemy law is just another feature of Establishment. Now, Muslim immigrants might well dislike Establishment – but it’s never been exactly a secret that this we have (formally) a Christian state, and to complain after you’ve take residency that this is somehow offensive to your basic rights seems a bit rum, to say the least.
(That’s not to say that Muslims couldn’t argue for Disestablishment, just not that this is somehow a matter of justice, life and death. After all, R.C.s are more explicitly discriminated against than Muslims – and few of them seem to give a stuff.)
Does that mean that it is not true that:
"Most of this violent mass annihilation has essentially been financed by the larger Middle Eastern Muslim countries with Saudi Arabia as the primary financier".
Just wondered, since it should be relatively easy to bring up some counterfacts?
> Wahhabists won’t be able to bring prosecutions – only the Attorney General
Yes, I know, but he’ll do so in response to complaints. Who do you think will be complaining?
Jim,
You’ve got a fair point, but so has Blimpish.
> pointing out the law is used infrequently isn’t a good argument in favour of inequality under it.
The point isn’t so much that it’s used infrequently as why it’s used infrequently: jury nullification. We have a long and fine tradition in this country of effectively repealing laws without officially repealing them. Of course, this could perhaps be explained better to Muslims if it weren’t for every Government’s staunch opposition to ever admitting that jury nullification is possible.