Brutal attack in London heightens terror fears

[Dino Velvet]

Such a cowardly but savage killing. Sort them out as you will, UK.

http://news.yahoo.com/brutal-attack-london-heightens-terror-fears-011640323.html


Brutal attack in London heightens terror fears

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oXh_6AJBHy_uEbdrklkymA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjg-/http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/04/21/image001-png_162613.png (http://www.ap.org/)By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD and PAISLEY DODDS | Associated Press – 18 mins ago


LONDON (AP) — Two men with butcher knives hacked another to death Wednesday near a London military barracks and one then went on video to explain the crime — shouting political statements, gesturing with bloodied hands and waving a meat cleaver. Soon after, arriving police shot and wounded the unidentified assailants and took them into custody.
The brutal daylight attack galvanized this city and raised fears that terrorism had returned to London.
Authorities did not identify the victim by name, but French President Francois Hollande referred to him as a "soldier" at a news conference in Paris with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron would not confirm that, but British media reported that the victim was wearing a shirt in support of troops and Britain's Ministry of Defense said it was investigating whether a U.K. soldier was involved.
Calling it "an appalling murder," Cameron said there were "strong indications" it was an act of terrorism, and two other officials said there were signs the attack was motivated by radical Islam.
The Cabinet's emergency committee was immediately convened and security was stepped up at army barracks across London. Cameron cut short his Paris trip to return to London and his office said he would chair another session Thursday.
The incident unfolded Wednesday afternoon when officers responded to reports of an assault just a few blocks from the Royal Artillery Barracks in the neighborhood of Woolwich.
Images from the scene showed a blue car that appeared to have been used in the attack, its hood crushed and rammed into a signpost on a sidewalk that was smeared with blood. A number of weapons — including butchers' knives, a machete and a meat cleaver — were strewn on the street.
While there were moments of chaos — one local primary school went into lockdown when a teacher saw the victim's body — the scene was striking in its normalcy. Pedestrians milled about with grocery bags and shopping carts as a body lay motionless in the street — and the attackers remained on the scene, wielding long knives.
One British broadcaster ran video taken on a cellphone of what appeared to be one of the attackers, his hands covered in blood, making political statements about "an eye for an eye" as a body lay behind him.
Footage — obtained by ITV news and The Sun newspaper — showed a man in a dark jacket and knit cap walking toward a camera, clutching a meat cleaver and a knife. Speaking in English with a British accent, he apologized that women passers-by "have had to witness this" barbarity, saying that "in our land our women have to see the same."
He gave no indication what that land was as he urged people to tell the government to "bring our troops back." British troops are deployed in Afghanistan and recently supported the French-led intervention in Mali.
"We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you," the man declared. "We must fight them as they fight us." The camera then panned away to show a body lying on the ground.
The Associated Press examined the footage to verify its authenticity, cross-referencing images from the scene, aerial shots, the location of a car behind the alleged attacker and the appearance of a body and a car in the background. There was no immediate way for the AP to verify who the cameraman was.
Other images showed the second suspect clutching a long knife as he engaged in conversation with a woman who British media said tried to intervene to prevent further bloodshed.
The Daily Telegraph identified the woman as Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, 48, and said she confronted the attackers, telling them: "It is only you versus many people. You are going to lose."
Saying she wanted to stop the suspect from attacking anyone else, she asked him if he "did it" and what he wanted.
"He said: 'I killed him because he killed Muslims and I am fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan. They have nothing to do there,'" she told the newspaper.
Britain has been at the heart of several terror attacks or plots in recent years, the most deadly being the 2005 rush-hour suicide bombings when 52 commuters were killed. More recently, Parviz Khan was convicted in 2008 of plotting to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier in Birmingham.
Some extremists have lashed out at Britain's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Recently, groups have also criticized Britain's assistance in the French-led mission to Mali to root out Islamic extremists in the north.
Britain's prime minister said there were "strong indications" Wednesday's attack was a terrorist incident.
"We have suffered these attacks before, we have always beaten them back," Cameron said. "We will not be cowed, we will never buckle."
Two U.K. government officials said the attack seemed to have been ideologically motivated by radical Islam, adding that the assessment was not based solely on video footage of one suspect making political statements against the British government. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.
Scotland Yard confirmed that counterterrorism officers were leading an investigation into the attack. Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said the two men had been arrested and urged Londoners to remain calm. Both were hospitalized, one in serious condition.
Late Wednesday, riot police fanned out in Woolwich as about 50 men waving the flag of the far-right English Defense League gathered, singing nationalistic songs and shouting obscenities about the Quran.
Muslim religious groups and charities were quick to condemn the attack and urged police to calm tensions. The Muslim Council of Britain called it a "barbaric act that has no basis in Islam," adding that "no cause justifies this murder."
The barracks where the attack took place house a number of the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery and independent companies of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards. They were the site of shooting events during the 2012 London Olympics.
Fred Oyat, 44, who lives in a high-rise nearby, said he heard four gun shots and went straight to the window.
"I saw one man lying there bleeding, another lying on the pavement being disarmed. A policeman was pointing a gun at him. A third man was lying further up the street. ... He was bleeding profusely," Oyat said. "There were four knives on the ground — big kitchen knives. The knives were very bloody."
David Dixon, head master at a nearby primary school, said he saw a body lying in the road outside. After making sure all students were inside, he quickly put the school into lockdown. He then heard shots fired, he told the BBC.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is called in when officers are involved in shootings, confirmed it was investigating the attack.
Witnesses recounted seeing the suspects — armed with meat cleavers and possibly a firearm — rushing toward police when officers arrived on the scene.
"He ran towards police before they could even get out of the car," Julia Wilders told Britain's Press Association.
Graham Wilders said he saw one of the suspects pull out a handgun.
"He didn't fire the gun," Wilders told the BBC. "They went for the police with a handgun. The police were the only ones who did any shooting."
___
Associated Press writer Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

[robertlouis]

There seems to be very little doubt that this was a terrorist attack by radical Muslims. Sadly, in addition to the initial horror, the incident has sparked anti-Islamic attacks on mosques and individual Muslims by far-right inspired groups, which is, of course, exactly what the perpetrators would have wanted to happen in the first place.

Here's the latest from the BBC.

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22630303

[betts]

cowardly


quite the opposite

[notdrunk]

quite the opposite

STFU..:fu:

[robertlouis]

quite the opposite

What do you mean? Attacking an unarmed man with machetes and decapitating him isn't exactly brave.

Yes, it was done for political ends, however misguided, but murder of the defenceless can only be described as cowardly, surely?

[betts]

What do you mean?


I was referring to the brazenness of an attack in broad daylight, amongst people, even taking the time to explain his reasoning for the attack.

[dc_guy_75]

I'll never understand why the west allows immigration from muslim countries, it seems there is so much to be lost over the long run.

It seems that as a group, they will never fully be "westernized" as the influence of their religion will always percolate.

[ShortyRothstein2]

This is pretty hardcore.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SXJKizfTqPA

[robertlouis]

I'll never understand why the west allows immigration from muslim countries, it seems there is so much to be lost over the long run.

It seems that as a group, they will never fully be "westernized" as the influence of their religion will always percolate.

The overwhelming majority of muslim immigrants in the west are entirely peaceable, hard-working contributors to society.

As for being "westernised", your unstated assumption seems to be that they should change their religion. Well, hasn't that one been a winner down the centuries!

And I've worked with Americans all over the world in very diverse cultures and couldn't say that they assimilated into the host culture, except for one guy. And he was considered an outcast.

[giovanni_hotel]

I was referring to the brazenness of an attack in broad daylight, amongst people, even taking the time to explain his reasoning for the attack.


Crazy?? Deranged?? Yes.

But what the hell is fucking brave about running over a defenseless man with your car, then while he's semi-conscious you and your fellow jihadist jump out and slaughter him with butcher knives??

Bravery usually requires risking one's life to save a life. This was the sadistic cowardly act of a a religious fanatic.

[bluesoul]

I'll never understand why the west allows immigration from muslim countries, it seems there is so much to be lost over the long run.

It seems that as a group, they will never fully be "westernized" as the influence of their religion will always percolate.

coincidentally, you yourself, with the above statement, exhibit characteristics that aren't fully "westernized" :)

[dc_guy_75]

How do western countries need more people who bring with them misogynistic, bronze-age perspectives?

Every muslim worships a middle-eastern, genocidal deity and their cultures/nation states tend to be some the most dirty, backwards places on our planet? Is it any coincidence muslim happen to occupy most of the absolute-shithole countries?

[robertlouis]

How do western countries need more people who bring with them misogynistic, bronze-age perspectives?

Every muslim worships a middle-eastern, genocidal deity and their cultures/nation states tend to be some the most dirty, backwards places on our planet? Is it any coincidence muslim happen to occupy most of the absolute-shithole countries?

Hard to know where to start with this nonsense diatribe.

First of all, yes, we have plenty of misogynistic, primitive folks already. They live in the bible belt and vote republican. Here in the UK they vote for UKIP.

And the "middle-eastern, genocidal deity"? That would be the same God worshipped by Christians and Jews. Although I wouldn't disagree with your definition if the horrific actions of the followers of Christ over the centuries are any guide.....

"Shithole countries". Presumably that includes Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, Dubai, Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Your massive generalisations only serve to confirm your almost total lack of knowledge about the realities and expose you as an ignorant racist. The situation is infinitely more complex than your simplistic prescriptions suggest.

[dc_guy_75]

If we have "primitive" folks already, why import more?

Here in the US, muslims make up 2% of the population, while in the UK its 5% and France closer to 8%. Yeah, that'll work out for you well.

How is it being "racist" when muslims come in all races?

Its a shame that educated people tolerate islam, as a religion.

Religious people can go fuck themselves, especially muslims.

[Cecil Rhodes]

Hard to know where to start with this nonsense diatribe.

First of all, yes, we have plenty of misogynistic, primitive folks already. They live in the bible belt and vote republican. Here in the UK they vote for UKIP. ....

It is very nice of you to show your True Colors R.L.

[Prospero]

Phew.... as RL said it is hard to know where to begin on this one.
1. These people were animals. Clearly brainwashed by radical Jihadists either via the internet or in person. There are groups whose purpose is to recruit and radicalize disassfected young people - organisations such as Hizb'ut Tahrir for instance. There is NO excuse for this behaviour. A cold blooded crime.

2. It appears they were converts - from the afro caribbean community, not immigrants from Muslim countries.

3. They do not represent the mainstream of islam. There is a global battle underway now between the radical elemnets within this faith - most popularly identified with al-Queda - and the br0ader faith which does not in any way encourage or support this behaviour.

4. The backlash this is breeding is unfortunate. The remarks here are, at least, simply words. In the Uk as RL says there have been attacks. Echoes here of the way that the whole irish community was seen as bad and culpable in the aftermath of IRA attacks.

5. I'd disagree with RL that UKIP's policies should be paralleled to those of Jihadists. They are a deeply intolerant political party of "little Englanders" and reflect a growing swing to the right with anti-immigration as one of their key messages. But the sort of impulse reflected by these religious thugs is far far more extreme than UKIP's attitudes. Closer to such past neo-Nazi groups as the national front or the present day British National party or street fighting groups like the English defence league.

[Prospero]

Of course the bovine right emerge on here, as always, to proclaim their clearly deeply held racist and and ill informed attitudes.

[robertlouis]

It is very nice of you to show your True Colors R.L.

I'd have thought they were pretty obvious by now, Cecil. :dancing:

[robertlouis]

If we have "primitive" folks already, why import more?

Here in the US, muslims make up 2% of the population, while in the UK its 5% and France closer to 8%. Yeah, that'll work out for you well.

How is it being "racist" when muslims come in all races?

Its a shame that educated people tolerate islam, as a religion.

Religious people can go fuck themselves, especially muslims.

You must be lots of fun at parties....

[bobvela]

Sadly, in addition to the initial horror, the incident has sparked anti-Islamic attacks on mosques and individual Muslims by far-right inspired groups, which is, of course, exactly what the perpetrators would have wanted to happen in the first place.

Here's the latest from the BBC.

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22630303

Any time there is an incident of Muslim commuting (or attempting to commit) a terrorist act in a western country... we often hear fears of 'backlash' against the Muslim community in the media (and from the talking heads in the local Muslim community)... fortunately... these fears are often misplaced as the actual rate of # of 'hate' crimes in this country is pretty low... and those against Muslims are even lower per the FBI crime stats (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2012/12/10/hate-crime-incidents-down/).

[Cecil Rhodes]

I'd like to see his brothers pull that shit on us .

http://www.frumforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/GURKHAS_02.jpg

[Cecil Rhodes]

Of course the bovine right emerge on here, as always, to proclaim their clearly deeply held racist and and ill informed attitudes.

Cow or Bull ?

[Prospero]

In your case Cecil, the shit is purely from the bull Cecil... but then you have a sturdy reputation to maintain.

[robertlouis]

Any time there is an incident of Muslim commuting (or attempting to commit) a terrorist act in a western country... we often hear fears of 'backlash' against the Muslim community in the media (and from the talking heads in the local Muslim community)... fortunately... these fears are often misplaced as the actual rate of # of 'hate' crimes in this country is pretty low... and those against Muslims are even lower per the FBI crime stats (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2012/12/10/hate-crime-incidents-down/).

That's thankfully true in both the UK and the US, but there's evidence in the wake of this horror of the EDL (English Defence League), a far-right group, actively orchestrating attacks on muslim property and in some cases on individuals - which as I said earlier, is exactly what the terrorists want to happen.

As ever, it's time for cool heads on all sides and allow the authorities to act and for due legal process to take its course.

[Cecil Rhodes]

In your case Cecil, the shit is purely from the bull Cecil... but then you have a sturdy reputation to maintain.

As do you ....

http://chechar.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/black-whip.jpg?w=300&h=298

[robertlouis]

In your case Cecil, the shit is purely from the bull Cecil... but then you have a sturdy reputation to maintain.

Asinine might have been better - bovine behaviour tends to be placid and stupid.....

[SheWantsTheD]

2. It appears they were converts - from the afro caribbean community, not immigrants from Muslim countries.

This is another assumption. There are many African countries with large Muslim populations. All black people in europe and america are immigrants, someone in their family came to the west by one way or another. It could well be that these two were born into families already practicing Islam but became radicalized and then went off and did these things.
This coming from a black male born into a christian family. I would laugh if someone called me a christian "convert". I was raised in it.

[tsadriana]

It has been confirmed this morning that the guy who was killed it was a soldier......

[robertlouis]

This is another assumption. There are many African countries with large Muslim populations. All black people in europe and america are immigrants, someone in their family came to the west by one way or another. It could well be that these two were born into families already practicing Islam but became radicalized and then went off and did these things.
This coming from a black male born into a christian family. I would laugh if someone called me a christian "convert". I was raised in it.

The current news reports say that they were British born black men who converted to Islam ten years ago.

[Cecil Rhodes]

Asinine might have been better - bovine behaviour tends to be placid and stupid.....

http://www.elvet-striders.org.uk/images/2011/JamesHerriotStart.jpg

[robertlouis]

It has been confirmed this morning that the guy who was killed it was a soldier......

And because the attack took place yards from Woolwich barracks, the intent was clearly deliberate but the choice of victim was entirely random. Poor guy.

The next development could well be to show that either these two were rogues operating on their own, or that it's the first indication of possibly more similar attacks. The seriousness with which it's being treated by the government suggest that at the very least they suspect it's the latter.

There are four big RAF stations within ten miles of where I live. I reckon they'll be increasing their security as I write.

[Cecil Rhodes]

And because the attack took place yards from Woolwich barracks, the intent was clearly deliberate but the choice of victim was entirely random. Poor guy.

The next development could well be to show that either these two were rogues operating on their own, or that it's the first indication of possibly more similar attacks. The seriousness with which it's being treated by the government suggest that at the very least they suspect it's the latter.

There are four big RAF stations within ten miles of where I live. I reckon they'll be increasing their security as I write.

How do the planes keep from hitting each other ?

[bluesoul]

How do western countries need more people who bring with them misogynistic, bronze-age perspectives?

Every muslim worships a middle-eastern, genocidal deity and their cultures/nation states tend to be some the most dirty, backwards places on our planet? Is it any coincidence muslim happen to occupy most of the absolute-shithole countries?

i'm curious: how is the deity genocidal?

[tsadriana]

And because the attack took place yards from Woolwich barracks, the intent was clearly deliberate but the choice of victim was entirely random. Poor guy.

The next development could well be to show that either these two were rogues operating on their own, or that it's the first indication of possibly more similar attacks. The seriousness with which it's being treated by the government suggest that at the very least they suspect it's the latter.

There are four big RAF stations within ten miles of where I live. I reckon they'll be increasing their security as I write.
Yes they will secure protection and security all over the Lndon ....Lets see what happens with the Cobra meteng this morning .....Now people will look back when they walk in the street in case some idiot will try again someting...Its sad because the good people pay the tribute for this rats .

[robertlouis]

How do the planes keep from hitting each other ?

We sent the Merkin ones home so it doesn't happen any more.... :whistle:

[robertlouis]

Yes they will secure protection and security all over the Lndon ....Lets see what happens with the Cobra meteng this morning .....Now people will look back when they walk in the street in case some idiot will try again someting...Its sad because the good people pay the tribute for this rats .

I'll be going over to Huntingdon later and will watch out for the security around the Brampton and Alconbury bases.

[Cecil Rhodes]

i'm curious: how is the deity genocidal?

The Deity is not . It is The Prophet is where this stuff came from whether actuall or misguided translation .

[tsadriana]

I'll be going over to Huntingdon later and will watch out for the security around the Brampton and Alconbury bases.
Here where i am its perfect but i think im gonna change my location more towards east england

[robertlouis]

Here where i am its perfect but i think im gonna change my location more towards east england

Stay where you are, Adriana. All the Raf stations and barracks are to the east of you.

And anyway, I like having you as a near neighbour...... :dancing:

[bluesoul]

The Deity is not . It is The Prophet is where this stuff came from whether actuall or misguided translation .

okay. then prophet should be arrested right. and charged. do you know of his whereabouts?

[Cecil Rhodes]

We sent the Merkin ones home so it doesn't happen any more.... :whistle:

You sent your Pubic Hair wigs home ?

[dc_guy_75]

i'm curious: how is the deity genocidal?

Mass killings of Yahweh =

Noahs Flood
Sodom/Gomorrah
First Born Egyptians
Having Moses ordering the Levites to slaughter the Golden Calf Worshippers
Allowing Satan to kill Job's family, to win a bet
Ordering the Jews to kill the native Caananites
etc etc etc

How many babies were killed?

[robertlouis]

You sent your Pubic Hair wigs home ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9l9amoo-Ho&feature=player_detailpage

Well, they're your fellow-countrymen.

[Cecil Rhodes]

okay. then prophet should be arrested right. and charged. do you know of his whereabouts?

probably at home with his 2 y/o to 7 y/o wives an the boys the same age he hangs out with .

[Cecil Rhodes]

Well, they're your fellow-countrymen.

No they are not ,

http://www.correctcraftfan.com/forum/uploads/4319/Dr._Strangelove_-_President_Merkin_Muffley_ccf1.jpg

[Prospero]

DC Guy -the deity worshipped by Muslims is the same one worshipped by Christians and jews.

[Prospero]

This is another assumption. There are many African countries with large Muslim populations. All black people in europe and america are immigrants, someone in their family came to the west by one way or another. It could well be that these two were born into families already practicing Islam but became radicalized and then went off and did these things.
This coming from a black male born into a christian family. I would laugh if someone called me a christian "convert". I was raised in it.

It is a guess true... but the guys reportedly spoke with English accents, they appear to be Afro-Caribbean rather than African. I know that many young men from that community have been radicalised in the UK by extremist groups.

As to being part of a larger conspiracy - time will tell. But the weapons of choice and the behaviour - a rusty revolver and a machete - suggest to me radicalised individuals rather than a group acting in concert with a larger organisation. But that is also guesswork.

[GroobySteven]

How do western countries need more people who bring with them misogynistic, bronze-age perspectives?


Sounds like most Christians and Jews to me.

[giovanni_hotel]

Much of Muslim cultural orthodoxy seems to be from from a 1000 years ago which is the heart of the problem.

Currently Islamic culture in a general sense is out of step with modern society. Yes Christianity has its own history of horrific bloodshed, but how many body blows does the West have to absorb while we wait for our Muslim brothers and sisters to 'catch up'??

You would think in the 21st century with the dissemination of technology and global digital communication, it wouldn't take decades if not hundreds of years for a perverse ideology practiced by extremists to be discredited.

The West is under no obligation to tolerate this behavior.

The Islamic world may be forced to be left alone by themselves in a corner until they learn the difference between right and wrong.

It sucks for Muslim moderates who are going to be swept up in a growing resentment against Islam.

[Stavros]

I think the first thing one must say is to acknowledge the bravery of those passers-by who did not run away from the scene, but ran straight to the man on the ground. Even when they realised it was not a car accident, and saw the butchers with their knives, they remained where they were, in the case of two women shielding the body from further attack-the killers then warned men away -one threatened to shoot a man approaching the scene -but the women had no idea if the two men were going to try and kill them, they stayed. A cub scout leader born on the continent (she has a French-German name possibly Swiss) confronted the tall man who had earlier spoken frankly to a man with a camera phone while clutching the knives in blood-stained hands -he said the intention was to start a war, to which she calmly replied that he would lose.
I think many of us would have run a mile rather than confront the killers.

It was alleged on tv last night that one of the killers may be Nigerian by origin, not from the Afro-Caribbean community; and that both men have at one time or another emerged on the radar of the intelligence services, but, perhaps as in Boston, it was not known with any certainty that the people identified would suddenly mount a lethal attack.

The loss of the Communications Data Bill in the last session of Parliament is already leading to calls for Internet surveillance to be re-introduced into English law -the 'internet preaching' that is now being said to be a cause of this extremism is being used as a means to intercept and identify internet traffic -presumably not just the Mafia and drug peddlers and the English Defence League- in order to prevent these attacks from happening again, as if the only way for impressionable young men to choose violent Jihad comes from the internet. This could be the most serious long-term affront to civil liberties.

I am puzzled by the attempt to paint Islam as an archaic religion when the doctrinal disputes that divide Muslims are not so different from those that have divided the Christian church, Judaism, Hinduism and just about any other religion, and are often shaped by Modern life and its attributes and a search for 'Purity' or some accommodation between ancient and contemporary values.

The Muwahhidun of Arabia who practise a form of 'Unitarian' Islam are less than 300 years old, and the religious source of the Saudi Arabian royal family (sometimes also known as Wahabi after the preacher al-Wahabi who married into the family in the 18th century) -but it is interesting that the shock troops (they were known as the Ikhwan or brothers) that Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud used to build his state out of the Najd to cover the western region of Arabia, the Hejaz including the cities of Makka and Madina, were led by a man who split from ibn Saud in the 1920s because the latter had introduced cars and the radio into the new Kingdom -the search for 'purity' in religion, to 'return to the straight path' has been an obsession of believers of all religions for as long as the religions have been going, it does not reflect the broader interest of most the believers who are too busy working and dealing with their families to spend their entire lives consumed by debates on what is or is not 'forbidden' or 'allowed'. And to complete the point, Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud was a moderniser -he razed to the ground most of the exquisite architecture of Jiddah, and the family to this day continue to build over historic sites related to Muhammad, and have built a colossal hotel/shopping mall complex that overlooks the Grand Mosque in Makka, and are currently flattening other parts of the city to extend the Mosque ever further into the city.

And so on, none of this matters when the obsessions of people who have decided they have no future outside violent Jihad remain a threat to all of us, as it is for everyone threatened by people who think violence is an achievement.

[Prospero]

Interesting juxtaposition in the UK papers today - affirming the point made by Stavros.

The front pages of the Guardian and Independent had images of these brutal killers and the reports of thei rime. Inside both papers featured inside, pictures of a wedding in Jerusalem involving the ultra orthodox Hassidim wing of Judaism and attended by some 25,000 guests.

Just as with ibn wahabi, this fundamentalist sect came into being some centuries ago (in the 17th century in Poland) founded by the Rabbi Baal Shem Tov to purify and take back to its roots the Jewish faith. (For those who want to know more about this the American Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote a large number of superb stories based around this community) and rather like the Wahhabist tendency they reject much of the modern world. They have on occasions, been violent in their protests against secularism (and for the Hassidim this means any Jews who are not of their particular religious persuasion). Notoriously they will stone cars driving through h their neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem on the Sabbath. The most extreme branches of the Hassidim do not even recognise the existence of the state of Israel because, they say, it was founded by man, not by God.

So the impulse to purifying and returning religions to anotion of their roots is not limited to islam alone.

A significant difference though is there is no prevailing ideology in Judaism which seeks to use violence to recreate a historical entity (in the case of al Queda the Khalifate)... though, of course, some might argue that the aggression involved in the creation and defence of the continued existence of the Israeli state to preserve itself is an example of such violence.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Prospero;1327997

A significant difference though is there is no prevailing ideology in Judaism which seeks to use violence to recreate a historical entity (in the case of al Queda the Khalifate)... though, of course, some might argue that the aggression involved in the creation and defence of the continued existence of the Israeli state to preserve itself is an example of such violence.[/QUOTE]

Are you saying that there Islam justifies the kind of violence we saw yesterday if it is going to result in the restoration of the/a Calliphate?

Where did Meir Kahane get his justification for violent acts against Arabs in Israel? Could it have been the Bible and its claims to the geography of ancient Israel which Kahane wanted to restore in modern times?

A Jewish woman once told me how she loathed the writing of Singer, because of his views on women.

[MacShreach]

Peace in the Middle-East is, simply, an impossibility. It is a central tenet of Islam that land once under Islamic Law (dar al-islam) must never be removed from that condition and returned to a 'Land of War' (dar al-harb). It is the bound duty of all believers to fight to the death to return dar al-harb to dar al-islam. Every war against Israel since the modern state was founded was begun by Arab states swearing to eradicate it completely, because they were obliged by Islam to do so.

In other words, this is NOT about the ideas of a bunch of extremists (although I agree that the Wahhabists are lunatics even amongst Islamists); the determination to destroy the state of Israel and to make war on its allies is core Islamic belief.

We could call Southern Baptists swivelly-eyed nutters as well, but they absolutely do not represent the core of Christian belief, nor do Hasidic Jews represent mainstream Judaism.

Israel is a modern, democratic state where everyone has a vote, including Arab citizens, something that is strictly forbidden to non-Muslims within Islamic states by Sharia Law.

Islamic apologists and Western liberals can say what they like, but unless the Islamic world undergoes root and branch change, which will never happen as long as the West is dependent on Saudi oil, war will continue. That is the true nature of Islam, as written in the Quran and the Hadith, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either naive or disingenuous.

There are many good people from an Islamic background, and believe me they have as much trouble with this as we should. Read Salman Rushdie for a start. But the faith itself is incompatible with modern democracy.

[MacShreach]

Are you saying that there Islam justifies the kind of violence we saw yesterday if it is going to result in the restoration of the/a Calliphate?

Where did Meir Kahane get his justification for violent acts against Arabs in Israel? Could it have been the Bible and its claims to the geography of ancient Israel which Kahane wanted to restore in modern times?

A Jewish woman once told me how she loathed the writing of Singer, because of his views on women.

1.Yes, it definitely does.

2. Meir Kahane was a political extremist. He does not represent mainstream Jewish or Israeli thinking.

[Cecil Rhodes]

.

It was alleged on tv last night that one of the killers may be Nigerian by origin, not from the Afro-Caribbean community; and that both men have at one time or another emerged on the radar of the intelligence services, but, perhaps as in Boston, it was not known with any certainty that the people identified would suddenly mount a lethal attack........ .

No Doo Doo ........ I said that the 1st time I saw them .

[Prospero]

Are you saying that there Islam justifies the kind of violence we saw yesterday if it is going to result in the restoration of the/a Calliphate? Emphatically not. See below.

Where did Meir Kahane get his justification for violent acts against Arabs in Israel? Could it have been the Bible and its claims to the geography of ancient Israel which Kahane wanted to restore in modern times?

A Jewish woman once told me how she loathed the writing of Singer, because of his views on women.

No Stavros. I am not saying that and nor did i say that. I said that, within Islam there is, in the shape of adherents to to the ideas of al Queda, a belief that such violence is acceptable in the pursuit of the restoration of the Khilifate/capliphate. In my many posts here on the subject i have always been careful to make the distinction between the vast majority of Muslims and this minorty of extremists.


Meir Kahane was an extremist zionist who committed acts of murder in pursuit of an extremist idea. Again I did point out that some would accuse the Israeli state of violence. Kahane was scarcely representative of anything.

And as for Isaac Bashevis Singer, indeed his writing reflected a very Conservative view of the role of women. Doesn't make him any the less good as a writer nor useful in understanding the mid set of the community he was writing about.

[GroobySteven]

The two terror suspects being held under armed guard at hospitals in London were both known to security services, Government sources say.
The men - who were apparently assessed by MI5 as not posing a threat requiring "immediate intervention" - were arrested following the hacking to death of a serving soldier in the street in Woolwich, southeast London.
Sky's crime correspondent Martin Brunt said one suspect had been identified as Michael Adeboloja, a 28-year-old Londoner of Nigerian descent.

[GroobySteven]

Are Muslim Extremists Invading Britain? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KtJKNgO_ys)

[Stavros]

1.Yes, it definitely does.

2. Meir Kahane was a political extremist. He does not represent mainstream Jewish or Israeli thinking.

The word Caliph plus its variants, is derived from the concept of a 'successor' to Muhammad, and is therefore not in the Quran; engaging in acts of violence to (re-)create the Caliphate that was dissolved with the end of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1923 is fundamental to the political agenda of al-Qaeda and other extremists groups, but has no sanction in the Quran, and is no more mainstream a part of Islamic thought than the fringe ideas of Kahane to Judaism which you identify as such.

[Stavros]

Meir Kahane was an extremist zionist who committed acts of murder in pursuit of an extremist idea. Again I did point out that some would accuse the Israeli state of violence. Kahane was scarcely representative of anything.


Kahane himself denied a connection to Theodor Herzl and the political Zionism that became pivotal to the creation of Israel as we know it today; whether or not he is a Zionist because his claim is the direct inheritance of the covenant Abraham made with God seems to me to be part of a doctrinal argument about the meaning of Zionism, which, though important in its own regard, has nothing to do with the violence we saw on the streets of London yesterday.

"What is Zionism" by Rabbi Meir Kahane - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEuxPHJ8YSU)

[Stavros]

I return to the first point I made this morning: the courage of those women who went to help a man they thought had been run over by a car, but did not flee when they realised he had been attacked by two men with knives who were still there. I think there is a growing trend that suggests people will no longer stand by when these events happen: the slogan that emerged from both 9/11 and other atrocities in London, Madrid and elsewhere: We are not afraid -seems to me to be in tune with our times.

[Prospero]

I agree with that last post from Stavros

[irvin66]

Oh dear those crazy Muslims again! Are they not tired all the violence? :ignore:

[Stavros]

Maybe they were inspired by Anders Breivik -where is he from again?

[Prospero]

I repeat - despite the slur made by Stavros suggesting i beleive that islam sees violence as acceptable in pursuit of the restoration of the Caliphate - that I do not and have clearly stated that many times in this forum.

The actions of extremists like those in London yesterday, the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, the bombers in London and Madrid and those behind 9/11 represent a tiny minority within islam.

I did not raise the name or the issue of Meir kahane, Stavros. You did! In discussing Hassidism I was drawing a parallel only between the idea of renewal at grassroots level of a faith between ibn Wahab and the Rabbi Baal Shem Tov.

[robertlouis]

Oh dear those crazy Muslims again! Are they not tired all the violence? :ignore:

Come on, Irvin. Either you're joking or stupid. Which is it?

[irvin66]

They have to stop the violence that is just sick. Dialogue is the right way and not violence!

[robertlouis]

They have to stop the violence that is just sick. Dialogue is the right way and not violence!

I agree. But two possibly rogue males don't represent a whole community, just as Anders Breivik is far from a typical Norwegian.

[MacShreach]

The word Caliph plus its variants, is derived from the concept of a 'successor' to Muhammad, and is therefore not in the Quran; engaging in acts of violence to (re-)create the Caliphate that was dissolved with the end of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1923 is fundamental to the political agenda of al-Qaeda and other extremists groups, but has no sanction in the Quran, and is no more mainstream a part of Islamic thought than the fringe ideas of Kahane to Judaism which you identify as such.

Jihadwatch has the information you need here, including the unedited videos made by the terrorists. I suggest you inform yourself.

There is absolutely no question whatsoever that these and other terrorosts find their sanction in their religious code. It would appear that some media are editing out references to their 'Holy Book' which the terrorists themselves made, presumably for reasons of political correctness.

www.jihadwatch.org (http://www.jihadwatch.org/)

For the record, I repeat, there are many fine Muslims, but their religion is something else altogether. Although it is easy to argue that were the codes of Judaism or Christianity strictly applied the result might be similar, the fact is they are not. We live, thankfully, in the secular world.

I quote '...we are forced by the Qur'an, in Sura At-Tawba, through many ayah in the Qu'ran, we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'

[Prospero]

All the extremists I've met believe that the Quran justifies their violence. The book is riddled with contradictions and almost any action can be justified y recourse to it. But I repeat the VAST majority of Muslims do not advocate or practice the sort of violence carried out by these groups.

[GroobySteven]

But I repeat the VAST majority of Muslims do not advocate or practice the sort of violence carried out by these groups.

Is not advocating or practicing that violence enough? Or should they be condemning, closing those Mosque's and demanding more of their religion when in this country? Maybe there is too much complacency.

[Prospero]

On the BBC lunchtime news today and in the morning papers key leaders of the UK's Muslim community condemned this attack unreservedly.

Seanchai... which mosques are you referring to?

There are social activist groups working in the Muslim community to try and deflect the reCruiters from disaffected young Muslims. Groups like the active change foundation based in north london for instance.

http://www.activechangefoundation.org/

[robertlouis]

Is not advocating or practicing that violence enough? Or should they be condemning, closing those Mosque's and demanding more of their religion when in this country? Maybe there is too much complacency.

I agree up to a point. It's true that many muslims and their spokesmen genuinely agonise about events such as these and condemn them with absolute sincerity, but it does also appear sometimes that the condemnation stops short of taking decisive action within institutional Islam to deal with the problems at source. I don't think it's complacency for a moment, but perhaps it's something to do with the key tenets of the religion.

Maybe someone with better knowledge can enlighten us.

[GroobySteven]

On the BBC lunchtime news today and in the morning papers key leaders of the UK's Muslim community condemned this attack unreservedly.

Seanchai... which mosques are you referring to?

There are social activist groups working in the Muslim community to try and deflect the reCruiters from disaffected young Muslims. Groups like the active change foundation based in north london for instance.

http://www.activechangefoundation.org/

Where was he one-eyed hook guy and his cohorts preaching?

[Prospero]

Shame there are no visible Muslim members here.

But check out that link.

I made a film about them three years ago together with other Imams and leaders of the community who were very clear about denouncing the extremism in the faith.

But it is a religion riddled with sectarian differences - the big binary one is between Sunni and Shia.

But then there are groups like the Ahmadis who are big in the UK and paste their cars with slogans saying "Love for all hared for one.' (They though are not acceptable to mainstram islam because they believe there was a prophet after Muhammed) Their mosque in Mordern in South London is the biggest in Europe. So there is one group of Muslims who as a collective set their helm against violence. The mystic Sufi tendency within islam (their most visible group are the whirling dervishes in istanbul) is also wholly pacifist.

[MacShreach]

I agree up to a point. It's true that many muslims and their spokesmen genuinely agonise about events such as these and condemn them with absolute sincerity, but it does also appear sometimes that the condemnation stops short of taking decisive action within institutional Islam to deal with the problems at source. I don't think it's complacency for a moment, but perhaps it's something to do with the key tenets of the religion.

Maybe someone with better knowledge can enlighten us.


Muslims living in dar al-harb are allowed by their code to appear to do everything that is required for them to succeed in that country. However, taking any kind of actual action against another Muslim, or favouring a non-Muslim over a Muslim, is forbidden. Therefore many, not all, Muslims pay lip-service to the idea of working against the extremists but rarely act on it.

You're right, it is not complacency, it is far worse. Tony Blair's establishment of 'Faith Schools' means that there are now young Muslims who have no conception that their faith is simply a mythology, that science works, or that they live in a secular democracy in which they are required to obey non-Muslim laws. Further there has been the scandalous and in my opinion seditious approval of Sharia Law and courts in many UK cities. This is not complacency, it is the lamb leading itself to slaughter.

[Prospero]

Dr Hook - Abu Hamza al Masri - now deported i think! Finsbury Park.Indeed he and his followers were part of the problem. But again really not typical. There are three Mosques close to where i live. All with ordinary middle class men as their Imams.

[LibertyHarkness]

good old religion the bane of humanity :) sad news indeed about the poor lad executed in that way ...

[Prospero]

MacScreach while clearly knowing a lot about islam but appears to be part of the school of thought that beleives all Muslims are our enemy. Wrong. I am familiar with the concepts of the dar-al-harb etc. But it is scurrilous to suggest that all Muslims are simply paying lip service to the values of the societies in which they live. i was talking at length to an American Muslim leader last week - part of a congressional group set up to to help foster mutual understanding between Muslim communities and the wider US public - and she (yes a woman leading a Muslim group... that also flies in the face of popular prejudice, doesn't it) told me about the very considerable professional class of muslims living there. So I suppose Macscreach thinks people like the Conservative Baroness Warsi or Faisal islam of C4 news - to name two re really closest Jihadists. Come on.

[MacShreach]

What is not being appreciated here is that there are several distinct waves of Muslim immigration to Europe. Broadly, there are those who came prior to 1990, and those who have come since. The first wave tended to be middle-class, reasonably well-off and well-educated. They tended to be very moderate. The later immigrants are often working-class or come from very poor backgrounds, are often very poorly educated and radicalised before they even arrive. Add into this the effects of preachers like al-Hamza (who has been deported) on the often-disaffected youth of the early wave, and you have a powder-keg.

[bluesoul]

Mass killings of Yahweh =

Noahs Flood
Sodom/Gomorrah
First Born Egyptians
Having Moses ordering the Levites to slaughter the Golden Calf Worshippers
Allowing Satan to kill Job's family, to win a bet
Ordering the Jews to kill the native Caananites
etc etc etc

How many babies were killed?

hey, this is actually kinda funny

[Prospero]

Dont be so patronising. "What is not appreciated here...." Of course many of us know that.

[bluesoul]

good old religion the bane of humanity :)

you're right. if it wasn't for religion, that machette wielding psycho was on his way to graduating from cambridge in chemistry

[MacShreach]

It's a fact.

[robertlouis]

What is not being appreciated here is that there are several distinct waves of Muslim immigration to Europe. Broadly, there are those who came prior to 1990, and those who have come since. The first wave tended to be middle-class, reasonably well-off and well-educated. They tended to be very moderate. The later immigrants are often working-class or come from very poor backgrounds, are often very poorly educated and radicalised before they even arrive. Add into this the effects of preachers like al-Hamza (who has been deported) on the often-disaffected youth of the early wave, and you have a powder-keg.

But there is also the phenomenon of young second-generation muslims, mostly from the sub-continent, and estranged from their families, hardworking folks who have in the main integrated and adjusted while retaining their faith. These men by contrast have become radicalised by hate preachers, many of whom are not based in the UK but are accessible via the internet. In almost every muslim terrorist attack in the UK, it has been young men who fit that profile who have been responsible.

[Prospero]

So you admit then Mr M..... ... that many of the Muslims living here in the UK are middle class and well off and well educated.

So then where does that leave your argument about all Muslims being closet Jihadists. Did you learn your facts aobut islam from reading some right wing tosh by melanie Phillips or Orianna Fallaci?

[robertlouis]

you're right. if it wasn't for religion, that machette wielding psycho was on his way to graduating from cambridge in chemistry

And your point is what, exactly?

[Prospero]

If it wasn't for islam much of the learning that underpins our modern Universities would have been lost forever.

[SheWantsTheD]

It is a guess true... but the guys reportedly spoke with English accents, they appear to be Afro-Caribbean rather than African. I know that many young men from that community have been radicalised in the UK by extremist groups.

As to being part of a larger conspiracy - time will tell. But the weapons of choice and the behaviour - a rusty revolver and a machete - suggest to me radicalised individuals rather than a group acting in concert with a larger organisation. But that is also guesswork.
Well your assumptions were correct. Turns out one of them converted in 2001.
I am glad that neither suspect died and is under armed guard. Perhaps we will get some real answers since usually the terrorist kills himself.

And did you guys hear about british armed forces being made to wear civilian clothing?

[MacShreach]

But there is also the phenomenon of young second-generation muslims, mostly from the sub-continent, and estranged from their families, who have in the main integrated and adjusted while retaining their faith. These men have become radicalised by hate preachers, many of whom are not based in the UK but are accessible via the internet. In almost every muslim terrorist attack in the UK, it has been young men who fit that profile who have been responsible.
That would be the ones I meant by 'often-disaffected youth of the early wave', Robert. There are many specific reasons why these young men (as they usually are) become disaffected enough to contemplate violence, and their corrupters are expert at exploiting every avenue, from local issues like unemployment to international ones. However the solution is not to accommodate but to challenge them, something the political class in the UK (and in many other countries) seems unwilling to do.

[bluesoul]

And your point is what, exactly?

you blame the person not the religion. i do love this long strung-pearl of cliches though:


But there is also the phenomenon of young second-generation muslims, mostly from the sub-continent, and estranged from their families, hardworking folks who have in the main integrated and adjusted while retaining their faith. These men by contrast have become radicalised by hate preachers, many of whom are not based in the UK but are accessible via the internet. In almost every muslim terrorist attack in the UK, it has been young men who fit that profile who have been responsible.

[Prospero]

These are among the worst recruiters of disaffected young men in the UK (and elsewhere).
Hizb ut-Tahrir

http://www.hizb.org.uk/

They're a global group who work to radicalise young men - and have been outlawed in many Muslim countries. They should be banned here but will then perhaps
simply change their names and re-emerge. Other groups have done this such as al Muhajiroun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Muhajiroun

This group continually re-invents itself and is run by a lunatic called Anjem Choudary. All are kept a close eye on by M15. Choudary has links to Omar Bakri-Muhammad a Saudi born cleric. The group is banned in Saudi Arabia.
So it isnt not through want of trying by the Government.

Choudhary is the ring leader of the group who protest whenever british soldiers arrive back in the UK. News reports suggest a link between him and these killers.

[tsadriana]

If we let the religions to rule our lives there will always be a problem

[MacShreach]

you blame the person not the religion. If you mean, we shouldn't condemn the whole popuation of Muslims as terrorists, then I completely agree. The actual activists are a small minority. Unfortunately their code is itself violent, and while I accept that there is plenty of violence in the Old and New Testaments, the fact is that...

[robertlouis]

you blame the person not the religion. i do love this long strung-pearl of cliches though:

I agree with your first point.

As for the second, they may indeed be cliches, but they are also fact.

[robertlouis]

If we let the religions to rule our lives there will always be a problem

And the same is largely true for those of us who have no religion. It's all pervasive, not just in terms of terrorism, but also issues like gay marriage, abortion etc. No religious group should have the right to impose their views on the citizens of a secular state.

[Prospero]

Oh for goodness sake... radical Muslims might be the biggest terrorist issue right now, but terrorism has been practised by groups in almost every country. For instance irgun and the Stern gang in Israel ... or the Burmese terrorism Muslims today.

[Prospero]

And the same is largely true for those of us who have no religion. It's all pervasive, not just in terms of terrorism, but also issues like gay marriage, abortion etc. No religious group should have the right to impose their views on the citizens of a secular state.

I agree with this sentiment.

[robertlouis]

Oh for goodness sake... radical Muslims might be the biggest terrorist issue right now, but terrorism has been practised by groups in almost every country. For instance irgun and the Stern gang in Israel ... or the Burmese terrorism Muslims today.

I agree, Prospero. But it has to be said that almost all terrorism currently aimed against western interests is ideologically - however mistakenly - inspired by radical interpretations of islam.

[Prospero]

It is right now. I don't argue with that... but the gentleman who now clearly isn't even reading my posts was being rather absolutist in his assertions.

[MacShreach]

And the same is largely true for those of us who have no religion. It's all pervasive, not just in terms of terrorism, but also issues like gay marriage, abortion etc. No religious group should have the right to impose their views on the citizens of a secular state.


Well said. The whole point of secular democracy is everybody gets to believe any fantasy they like from talking snakes to the spaghetti monster, but we all get a say in how the laws we live under are formed, and we agree to live thereby. That is why Islam, which has at its heart Sharia, a penal code that covers everything from how and who you can fuck to how and with what you brush your teeth, is incompatible with it. Sharia's not like the ten commandments, themselves a radically shortened version of the Code of Hammurabbi, (sp uncertain) but a vastly expanded, all encompassing legal formula that can never be modernised or modified in any way.

[MacShreach]

Oh I read 'em.

[bluesoul]

If you mean, we shouldn't condemn the whole popuation of Muslims as terrorists, then I completely agree.

that's exactly what i did not mean.



As for the second, they may indeed be cliches, but they are also fact.

but the guy involved in this recently attack doesn't even fit that generalization. he was born in the uk and a recently islamic convert.

although i got the hint of what you meant when you said "sub-contient". certainly more acceptable than "sub-human" right?

[tsadriana]

And the same is largely true for those of us who have no religion. It's all pervasive, not just in terms of terrorism, but also issues like gay marriage, abortion etc. No religious group should have the right to impose their views on the citizens of a secular state.
I second that x

[GroobySteven]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/drummer-lee-rigby-killed-in-woolwich-incident

https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/11484/20130523rigby02_960x640.jpg

Drummer Lee Rigby or ‘Riggers’ to his friends was born in July 1987 in Crumpsall, Manchester. He joined the Army in 2006 and on successful completion of his infantry training course at Infantry Training Centre Catterick was selected to be a member of the Corps of Drums and posted to 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (also known as the ‘Second Fusiliers’ or ‘2 RRF’).
His first posting was as a machine gunner in Cyprus where the battalion was serving as the resident infantry battalion in Dhekelia. Having performed a plethora of tasks while in Cyprus, he returned to the UK in the early part of 2008 to Hounslow, West London. Here, Drummer Rigby stood proudly outside the Royal Palaces as part of the Battalion’s public duties commitment. He was an integral member of the Corps of Drums throughout the Battalion’s time on public duties, the highlight of which was being a part of the Household Division’s Beating the Retreat - a real honour for a line infantry Corps of Drums.
In April 2009, Drummer Rigby deployed on Operations for the first time to Helmand province, Afghanistan, where he served as a member of the Fire Support Group in Patrol Base Woqab. On returning to the UK he completed a second tour of public duties and then moved with the Battalion to Celle, Germany, to be held at a state of high readiness for contingency operations as part of the Small Scale Contingency Battle Group.
In 2011, Drummer Rigby took up a Recruiting post in London where he also assisted with duties at Regimental Headquarters in the Tower of London.
An extremely popular and witty soldier, Drummer Rigby was a larger than life personality within the Corps of Drums and was well known, liked and respected across the Second Fusiliers. He was a passionate and life-long Manchester United fan.
A loving father to his son Jack, aged 2 years, he will be sorely missed by all who knew him. The Regiment’s thoughts and prayers are with his family during this extremely difficult time. “Once a Fusilier, always a Fusilier.”

[robertlouis]

that's exactly what i did not mean.



but the guy involved in this recently attack doesn't even fit that generalization. he was born in the uk and a recently islamic convert.

although i got the hint of what you meant when you said "sub-contient". certainly more acceptable than "sub-human" right?

The "sub-continent" is India and Pakistan. And every other attack to date in the UK has been carried out by men who fit that second-generation profile.

[Stavros]

Jihadwatch has the information you need here, including the unedited videos made by the terrorists. I suggest you inform yourself.

There is absolutely no question whatsoever that these and other terrorosts find their sanction in their religious code. It would appear that some media are editing out references to their 'Holy Book' which the terrorists themselves made, presumably for reasons of political correctness.

www.jihadwatch.org (http://www.jihadwatch.org/)

For the record, I repeat, there are many fine Muslims, but their religion is something else altogether. Although it is easy to argue that were the codes of Judaism or Christianity strictly applied the result might be similar, the fact is they are not. We live, thankfully, in the secular world.

I quote '...we are forced by the Qur'an, in Sura At-Tawba, through many ayah in the Qu'ran, we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'

Jihadwatch agrees with the Jihadists: taking the Quran out of context in order to justify a violent political campaign -much as Christians and some Jews take verses from the Old and New Testaments to justify their attacks on, for example, homosexuality -you know as well as I do that the original context for the Biblical texts was provided by the life and times in which they were written, just as the verses on 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' are a warning against retaliatory action rather than a recommendation for it, and the Suras of the Quran relate to quite specific incidents which happened at the time.

It is undoubtedly true that the Jihadists are Muslims; just as it is true that most Muslims are not Jihadists in the sense currently being used as part of political violence.

It is also true that more than 90% of the bombings and assassinations that were carried out in Europe by the Provisional IRA were carried out by Irish people; just as the most recent acts of violence have also been carried out by Irish men whose ultimate goal is a United Ireland. Yet the majority of Irish people condemned those actions: is there something inherently violent about Irish people -or for that matter Irish Roman Catholics? And if Christianity or even Roman Catholicism is not inherently violent as you suggest Islam is, why do some people in the world, even today, regard the violence inflicted on them by the British and the Americans as the work of 'Crusaders'? George W Bush was not just engaged in a political act of regime change in Iraq, he was combating the forces of Gog and Magog...for him, the conflict in Iraq was religious as well as political.

[Dino Velvet]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/drummer-lee-rigby-killed-in-woolwich-incident

https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/11484/20130523rigby02_960x640.jpg

Drummer Lee Rigby or ‘Riggers’ to his friends was born in July 1987 in Crumpsall, Manchester. He joined the Army in 2006 and on successful completion of his infantry training course at Infantry Training Centre Catterick was selected to be a member of the Corps of Drums and posted to 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (also known as the ‘Second Fusiliers’ or ‘2 RRF’).
His first posting was as a machine gunner in Cyprus where the battalion was serving as the resident infantry battalion in Dhekelia. Having performed a plethora of tasks while in Cyprus, he returned to the UK in the early part of 2008 to Hounslow, West London. Here, Drummer Rigby stood proudly outside the Royal Palaces as part of the Battalion’s public duties commitment. He was an integral member of the Corps of Drums throughout the Battalion’s time on public duties, the highlight of which was being a part of the Household Division’s Beating the Retreat - a real honour for a line infantry Corps of Drums.
In April 2009, Drummer Rigby deployed on Operations for the first time to Helmand province, Afghanistan, where he served as a member of the Fire Support Group in Patrol Base Woqab. On returning to the UK he completed a second tour of public duties and then moved with the Battalion to Celle, Germany, to be held at a state of high readiness for contingency operations as part of the Small Scale Contingency Battle Group.
In 2011, Drummer Rigby took up a Recruiting post in London where he also assisted with duties at Regimental Headquarters in the Tower of London.
An extremely popular and witty soldier, Drummer Rigby was a larger than life personality within the Corps of Drums and was well known, liked and respected across the Second Fusiliers. He was a passionate and life-long Manchester United fan.
A loving father to his son Jack, aged 2 years, he will be sorely missed by all who knew him. The Regiment’s thoughts and prayers are with his family during this extremely difficult time. “Once a Fusilier, always a Fusilier.”

Poor guy. RIP. Best thoughts and wishes to his family and friends during their grieving and beyond.

[Corran]

This sucks on so many levels I can't describe. Obama's boys strike again.

[Stavros]

Poor guy. RIP. Best thoughts and wishes to his family and friends during their grieving and beyond.

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree:

[Prospero]

Poor guy. RIP. Best thoughts and wishes to his family and friends during their grieving and beyond.:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree::ia gree::iagree:

[Prospero]

The vast bulk of Muslims living in the UK are not trying to impose their beliefs, their legal ideas or anything else on the wider British public.

[GroobySteven]

This sucks on so many levels I can't describe. Obama's boys strike again.

I hope you fucking mean, Osama?

[up_for_it]

This sucks on so many levels I can't describe. Obama's boys strike again.

Obama? Why? Because the attacker was African? Or a Muslim? Or both? Get a grip dude.

In any event- it's a terrible crime and I think this is the new face of terror, amateur, uncoordinated assholes inspired by frustration and an open source global media. Shades of Boston, only more low budget.

My thoughts go out to the victim's family and friends.

[be2378]

One more thing that shows the Muslims are a peacefull people.

[Corran]

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone with my last comment. As respect for the poor soul who's life was taken I withdraw the comment.

[irvin66]

One more thing that shows the Muslims are a peacefull people.
:iagree:

[irvin66]

Poor guy. RIP. Best thoughts and wishes to his family and friends during their grieving and beyond.
:iagree:Rest in peace. :(

[DCGuy343]

This sucks on so many levels I can't describe. Obama's boys strike again.

Obama??? Really?

I think you meant to type Osama, right?

If so use edit feature. If not, that is a really dumb post :shrug

[Jericho]

Poor bastard.
You go thru all that shit and then you cop it at home!

Makes me want to punch the fuck out of the next muslim i see.
I won't, i know it's wrong, but...
Job done. :shrug




https://www.gov.uk/government/news/drummer-lee-rigby-killed-in-woolwich-incident

https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/11484/20130523rigby02_960x640.jpg

Drummer Lee Rigby

[DCGuy343]

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree::i agree:

rip!

[Stavros]

For those who are interested, and I didn't know this until watching it on Channel 4 News this evening (I don't know the area personally), the pub across the road from the Woolwich barracks where Gunner Rigby was stationed, was bombed by the Provisional IRA in 1974:

"The Kings Arms is a public house in Woolwich, London, that was bombed in 1974 and is now a landmark on the route of the London Marathon.
Standing at 1 Frances Street by Woolwich Dockyard, it was built in the nineteenth century. In the 1881 census it is listed as the Kings Arms Hotel.
A bomb made of 6lb of gelignite with the addition of shrapnel was thrown through the window into the bar on 7 November 1974. Two people were killed in the explosion; Gunner Richard Dunne, aged 42, of the Royal Artillery and Alan Horsley, a sales clerk aged 20. Responsibility for this bombing was subsequently claimed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and specifically by part of the Active Service Unit apprehended at the Balcombe Street Siege. Some of the Guildford Four were charged with involvement in this bombing.[/URL]
In 1981 it became one of the pubs on the route of the London Marathon."
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Arms,_Woolwich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Arms,_Woolwich#cite_note-1)


I believe the local council want to pull it down and re-develop the site for accommodation.


That does not excuse what happened, but may raise security levels at the various known military installations and watering holes that are known in the UK.

[Gillian]

Where was he one-eyed hook guy and his cohorts preaching?
-
He gave up preaching hate and started flogging these ... ;)

http://www.ship-of-fools.com/gadgets/home_garden/media/abu_hamza_hooks.jpg

[Jericho]

He's been caught stealing twice...Would you trust him with your keys? :shrug


-
He gave up preaching hate and started flogging these ... ;)

http://www.ship-of-fools.com/gadgets/home_garden/media/abu_hamza_hooks.jpg

[yosi]

The vast bulk of Muslims living in the UK are not trying to impose their beliefs, their legal ideas or anything else on the wider British public.

I guess you missed that :


Are Muslim Extremists Invading Britain? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KtJKNgO_ys)


see you in hell Prospero , because both of us are not muslims :dancing:

if sending us to hell because we are not muslims, is not trying to impose their beliefs , you are a very NAIVE person..........

[buttslinger]

I don't think there is a better time to be outraged and upset, but in response I think you need ice water in your veins, and take a practical and ruthless solution.

[Prospero]

Easy to see how a lynch mob gets energised to judge by so much ill informed comment here. That video features a ludicrous demonstration by anjem choudhary a lunatic and his followers and is scarcely representative of anything.

[Cecil Rhodes]

For those who are interested, and I didn't know this until watching it on Channel 4 News this evening (I don't know the area personally), the pub across the road from the Woolwich barracks where Gunner Rigby was stationed, was bombed by the Provisional IRA in 1974:

"The Kings Arms is a public house in Woolwich, London, that was bombed in 1974 and is now a landmark on the route of the London Marathon.
Standing at 1 Frances Street by Woolwich Dockyard, it was built in the nineteenth century. In the 1881 census it is listed as the Kings Arms Hotel.
A bomb made of 6lb of gelignite with the addition of shrapnel was thrown through the window into the bar on 7 November 1974. Two people were killed in the explosion; Gunner Richard Dunne, aged 42, of the Royal Artillery and Alan Horsley, a sales clerk aged 20. Responsibility for this bombing was subsequently claimed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and specifically by part of the Active Service Unit apprehended at the Balcombe Street Siege. Some of the Guildford Four were charged with involvement in this bombing.[/URL]
In 1981 it became one of the pubs on the route of the London Marathon."
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Arms,_Woolwich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Arms,_Woolwich#cite_note-1)


I believe the local council want to pull it down and re-develop the site for accommodation.


That does not excuse what happened, but may raise security levels at the various known military installations and watering holes that are known in the UK.

I thought the Kings Arms were around the Queen's Arse .

[Cecil Rhodes]

Who shot these 2 Freedom Fighting Patriots ? Was it The MET or MoD Police ?

[Cecil Rhodes]

I guess you missed that :




see you in hell Prospero , because both of us are not muslims :dancing:

if sending us to hell because we are not muslims, is not trying to impose their beliefs , you are a very NAIVE person..........

LOOK ...... Protestant Horses .....

http://media.irishcentral.com/images/419*279/swf+Hyde+Park+IRA+1982+bombing.jpg

[Prospero]

The news media report this morning that the two thugs who murdered the young soldier in Woolwich were associated with the now banned group Al-Muhajiroun, reborn as Islam4UK... ruy by former market trader and trained solicitor Anjem Choudhary. Choudhary, in turn, is a well known supporter and facilitator of a radical lebanese born cleric called Omar Bakri Mohammed who has publicly and regularly called for the murder of Western soldiers. Bakri was deported to the lebanon in 2005 but Choudhary, born in Essex, still works in the UK. I met and interviewed Choudhary three years ago and, i had been warned by the intelligence services beforehand, this is a very sly character. Indeed he would not be drawn into making incriminating remarks on camera. He came across as more of a fool than craven - though clearly he is an evil character. Since interviewing him (and that in itself is a story that is almost hilarious) i regularly received text messages inviting me to meetings where the exiled cleric Bakri would address his followers by live video link from the Lebanon.
It is my belief that Choudhary should be arrested and, perhaps, charged with complicity in murder.
But as leading Tory politicians and former MI6 people said on the radio today MI5 and M16 find it hard to arrest people whose seeming only public behaviour is to protest and say outrageous things. They are protected by our freedom of speech laws and tradition.
The two killers had registered on their radar for their part in islam4UK, but had committed no crimes in the past.

What do you do about people like that? Terrorism and these ideas win when the wider public begins a backlash and when our freedoms of speech are diminished. This is a constant dilemma for a free and open society.

Finally I would, again argue that these despicable people are no more representative of the UK's Muslim communities than the EDL is of the wider British public.

The video that Seanchai posted hre yesterday is of members of this group protesting. They are a lunatic fringe but, sadly, lunatics do sometimes translate their mad ideas into reality - with the tragic results seen in Woolwich.

[SheWantsTheD]

The news media report this morning that the two thugs who murdered the young soldier in Woolwich were associated with the now banned group Al-Muhajiroun, reborn as Islam4UK... ruy by former market trader and trained solicitor Anjem Choudhary. Choudhary, in turn, is a well known supporter and facilitator of a radical lebanese born cleric called Omar Bakri Mohammed who has publicly and regularly called for the murder of Western soldiers. Bakri was deported to the lebanon in 2005 but Choudhary, born in Essex, still works in the UK. I met and interviewed Choudhary three years ago and, i had been warned by the intelligence services beforehand, this is a very sly character. Indeed he would not be drawn into making incriminating remarks on camera. He came across as more of a fool than craven - though clearly he is an evil character. Since interviewing him (and that in itself is a story that is almost hilarious) i regularly received text messages inviting me to meetings where the exiled cleric Bakri would address his followers by live video link from the Lebanon.
It is my belief that Choudhary should be arrested and, perhaps, charged with complicity in murder.
But as leading Tory politicians and former MI6 people said on the radio today MI5 and M16 find it hard to arrest people whose seeming only public behaviour is to protest and say outrageous things. They are protected by our freedom of speech laws and tradition.
The two killers had registered on their radar for their part in islam4UK, but had committed no crimes in the past.

What do you do about people like that? Terrorism and these ideas win when the wider public begins a backlash and when our freedoms of speech are diminished. This is a constant dilemma for a free and open society.

Finally I would, again argue that these despicable people are no more representative of the UK's Muslim communities than the EDL is of the wider British public.

The video that Seanchai posted hre yesterday is of members of this group protesting. They are a lunatic fringe but, sadly, lunatics do sometimes translate their mad ideas into reality - with the tragic results seen in Woolwich.

Good points. Good post. :iagree:

[Prospero]

A good reflective piece in today's Guardian by Simon Jenkins, chair of the UK national Trust.

Woolwich attack: This echo chamber of mass hysteria only aids terrorists
Perpetrators of violent acts of terror thrive on publicity – so politicians and the media need to stop giving it to them

We will not buckle to terrorism said David Cameron after the Woolwich murder on Wednesday. He then buckled. Everyone buckled. The home secretary buckled, the defence secretary buckled, the communities secretary buckled, the mayor of London buckled, the chief of police buckled, the press buckled, the BBC summoned its senior editors and they buckled. Everyone buckled.

The first question in any war – terrorism is allegedly a war – is to ask what the enemy most wants you to do. The Woolwich killers wanted publicity for their crime, available nowadays at the click of a mobile phone. They got it in buckets. Any incident is now transmitted instantly round the globe by the nearest "citizen journalist". The deranged of all causes and continents can step on stage and enjoy the freedom of cyberspace. Kill someone in the street and an obliging passerby will transmit the "message" to millions. The police, who have all but deserted the rougher parts of London, will grant you a full quarter hour for your press conference.

There is little a modern government can do to stem the initial publicity that terrorism craves. But it has considerable control over the subsequent response. When the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, pleaded for calm and for London to continue as normal, he was spitting into a hurricane. Terror could not have begged for more sensational attention than was granted it by Britain's political community and media.

The killers commanded the news agenda. Front pages became their platform, authenticating their manifesto with blaring headlines. The prime minister obediently raced home from important business in Paris. He slavishly "cleared his diary", plunged into his favourite Cobra bunker and summoned the mightiest in the land to "co-ordinate a response." Had the youths merely shot a soldier, I doubt if Cameron would have snapped so quickly into line. It was the medieval crudity of the weaponry, the brazen hacking and stabbing and blood splashed over the internet that had every politician homing in on Cobra, press officers in tow. Tabloid terror invited tabloid government.

Intoning a response to horror is one of the rituals of modern politics. The adjective mountain grows ever higher, depraved, sickening, horrific, barbaric, unspeakable. Damnation is sanctified by platitude. Unctuous "thoughts for the day" are uttered by religious leaders. If it bleeds it not only leads, it pleads for cliched analysis.

"Terrorism experts" rushed to radio studios demanding we all "be on our guard". Securocrats gleefully leapt forward to demand another snooper's charter, another twist in their ratchet of control. While imitators were encouraged to imitate, racist extremists were invited on to the streets in retaliation. All sense of proportion departed. We were soon at terrorism's apotheosis, violence dignified on the altar of fame.

We have a choice. Such acts nowadays mostly emanate from the fanatical corners of some sections of the community. We can treat them simply as crimes. While the professed cause may be different from that of gang feuds, robberies, domestic violence or mental illness, the outcome is the same – a violent death in the community. The police and security services are best placed to prevent it, not politicians. Violent people often claim "political status" for abhorrent deeds, but will only be encouraged to do so when politicians appear to agree with them. Two years ago the London rioters were invited by many on the left to supply political justification for their actions. Equally extremist politics will be attracted to use violence, as do certain strands of Islamist jihadism. There has always been an unholy alliance between criminality and authority. As Joseph Conrad noted of the terrorist and the policeman, "both come from the same basket".

Thus it was inane yesterday for security pundits to seek to elevate a vaguely motivated religious killing by linking it to a "possible overseas al-Qaida network". It recalled the 1950s Kefauver mafia committee in Washington, desperate to justify its existence by pleading with a series of small-time hoods to claim membership of some high-powered international network. The hoods blinked in amazement.

This week's killers certainly claimed a political message, attributing their deed to Britain's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They said that murdering a soldier in London was tit-for-tat for British soldiers killing Muslims in Asia. This does not require them to be part of some international network, merely to have read online propaganda. Nor does it require them to receive the accolade of a Cobra-style pandemonium. By doing so we risk accepting their terms of engagement in this grim debate.

British and American operators indeed use drone missiles to kill Muslim soldiers, and inevitably civilians, on the streets of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. They deploy horrific airborne violence against communities, including in non-combatant countries. Retaliation for these killings may not be "justifiable" in our terms. But jihadists have no access to drones and must rely on car bombs, nail bombs, machetes and cleavers.

The result may appal Londoners, but there are no citizen journalists to witness the appalling impact of a drone attack on a Pashtun village. Can we be surprised when the other side (or its distant sympathisers) retaliates on London, where it gets so much more publicity than in Baghdad or Kabul? Of course, people should be able to walk peacefully down the street in London. They should also be able to walk peacefully in Kandahar, Yemen or Baluchistan.

In taking mundane acts of violence and setting them on a global stage, we not only politicise them, we risk validating the furies that drive them. Closing down the internet to starve terrorist acts of publicity is not feasible, and stifles the debate that should be taking place peacefully. But we do have the option to exercise self-restraint in the aftermath, to control the impulse to hyperbole. We can deny the terrorist the megaphone of exaggeration and hysteria. When Cameron yesterday said we should defy terror by going about our normal business, he was right. Why did he not do so?

It is this echo chamber of horror, set up by the media, public figures and government, that does much of terrorism's job for it. It converts mere crimes into significant acts. It turns criminals into heroes in the eyes of their admirers. It takes violence and graces it with the terms of a political debate. The danger is that this debate is one the terrorist might sometimes win.

[Stavros]

I met and interviewed Choudhary three years ago and, i had been warned by the intelligence services beforehand, this is a very sly character. Indeed he would not be drawn into making incriminating remarks on camera. He came across as more of a fool than craven - though clearly he is an evil character. Since interviewing him (and that in itself is a story that is almost hilarious) i regularly received text messages inviting me to meetings where the exiled cleric Bakri would address his followers by live video link from the Lebanon.
It is my belief that Choudhary should be arrested and, perhaps, charged with complicity in murder.


You know the tactics that are deployed by self-appointed 'spokesmen' like Choudhary are intended to inflame passions; Gerry Adams when asked to condemn a killing would never reply directly but state he condemned all violence but ask why it happened -of course because of the British presence in Northern Ireland and so on. What we are dealing with are people whose politics is little different from 60s radicalism -that If you don't hit it, it won't fall, mentality, and one with a warped interpretation of reality. Were these two killers so uninformed they don't know British troops are being withdrawn from Afghanistan? Has noone -including Choudhary ever told them Christians and Jews live in 'our lands/their lands' and have done so for over 2,000 years?

None of this matters to Choudhary, he is there to fit a bill, like someone on Jerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle, when tv needs a provocative piece to camera. What would Derek Hatton say if he were invited to comment on the Royal Wedding? To argue that a useful idiot like Choudhary should be arrested is to fall into the trap that results in the precisely the abuse of civil liberties Choudhary wants, that arrests people without charge because you don't like what they say -there are some on his forum who would have you arrested and detained without trial for the same reason, probably me as well. Why dance to Choudhary's tune if you don't like it?

[MacShreach]

A good reflective piece in today's Guardian by Simon Jenkins, chair of the UK national Trust.

<snip> jihadists have no access to drones and must rely on car bombs, nail bombs, machetes and cleavers. <snip> Can we be surprised when the other side (or its distant sympathisers) retaliates on London, where it gets so much more publicity than in Baghdad or Kabul? <snip>

No point in repeating the whole of that verbiose exercise in sycophantic apologism, so let's isolate what this idiot (Jenkins) is actually saying: it's ok to kill off-duty British soldiers in London because it will get more attention than killing on-duty soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq. What cynical and complete drivel and how redolent of the utter spinelessness of accommodationists and appeasers.

Quite typical of today's Grauniad, however, where 'liberal' thinking has been replaced with with 'lily-livered'. Mind, I think recent history tells us something about where appeasement leads...

[Prospero]

Which right wing blogs do you rely on for your prejudiced arguments MacShreach?
Appeasement? Yep - why not round up these Muslims and put them in a camp.

[Prospero]

And Stavros - Choudhary is a bit more than a "self appointed" spokesman. he is a conduit between hardliners and gullible young men.

[Prospero]

Mr M....

So you give NO credence at all to the argument that, for instance, unmanned drone strikes which killed ordinary civilians in Pakistan might just create anger among a wider Muslim public - and tip the balance among some already disaffected Muslim men? President Obama yesterday acted on this and has decided to adjust US military behaviour accordingly.

I'm not saying this is a justification for the butchery on the streets. but it is a factor.

[MacShreach]

You find where I have ever advocated 'rounding Muslims up' and I might even consider responding to you again. Meantime your constant traduction and ad-hominem attacks merely illustrate the weakness of your case.

As to your last, you need to ask yourself this: when people come to Europe, are sheltered and protected by our society, legal system and culture, is it not appropriate that we ask them to demonstrate their loyalty to that culture rather than the one they left behind? When Britain was fighting Nazi Germany, did we invite Nazis in and tolerate them prosecuting acts of war on British soil? Or for that matter, during the Cold War, did we invite the enemy in to damage us? When British forces bombed Italian Catholics in WW2, did Catholics in the UK take up arms against it?

No. We are certainly not at war with Muslims, as I have repeatedly stated, but with totalitarian Islamic ideology, and we need to require Muslims to place our culture and politico-legal framework before a vicious, 1400-year old, warrior code which is hell-bent on global domination, and a completely non-existent god.

[Prospero]

Let's lower the temperature a bit and discuss this.

1. You and I may see their God as non-existent They do not (as is the case with devout Christians or Jews or believers in other faiths.) So that is an insult to ALL religious believers. It is not helpful I beleive to simply dismiss the religious faith of billions of people. A rather Dawkinsish position really.

2. Of course you have not called for them to be locked up. But your arguments otherwise tend towards that t position - i.e. comparisons with being at war with the Nazis in the 1940s - even if you do try to wriggle off the hook by saying "of course we are NOT at war" . You seem to want to have it both ways? And the argument about catholics is a curious one too.

3. All the evidence suggests we are are in conflict with AN islamic ideology but not the mainstream. That is where our positions differ. You seem genuinely to believe that it is the religion itself - and thus all its adherents - which is corrupted wholesale. My extensive work with Muslims and about islam - both in the UK and in the Middle East (and both in the academic sphere and in the media) suggests powerfully to me that it is a faith at war with itself and that there is, indeed, a dangerous and very aggressive element that is hostile to the West, but that this is NOT representative of the whole. The logical outplay of the position that sees islam as a form of "islamofascism" is the eradication of that faith, is it not?

Unlike President Obama yesterday, you have not addressed my question about the impact that Western intervenetions in Muslim majority countries has on members of this faith elsewhere. Many young disaffected Moslem men in the Uk are easy prey to the Radicals becuse they are disconnected now with the roots of their communities and are also seeing discrimination and hatred directed at them in the West (consider the right wing n Holand, in France, the EDL here,, neo-nazis in Germany etc)

As I asked before I would seriously love to know your sources. The arguments you deploy here remind me of those utilised by people like Melanie Philips and Orianna Fallaci and some of the more extreme American right wing anti-Muslim bloggers. Tell me your research is more profound that that?

[MacShreach]

Gosh you are really fond of traduction, aren't you? Do you think it makes your arguments stronger? I said 'we are not at war with Muslims, but with ....a totalitarian Islamic ideology'. And we are at indeed at war with that, and so we should be. We belong to a culture that believes in the equality of all under the law, that men and women are of equal status and value, and that we can use democratic method to change the laws we live under. Islam, and yes, the mainstream of Islam, accepts absolutely none of that, and would destroy our culture in an instant if it could. The extent to which people from Islamic backgrounds can really integrate into Western culture, as opposed to setting up ghettos within it, is a function of the extent to which they are secularised.

I have never knowingly read either of the people you mention, and yes, my research is quite deep enough to know what I am talking about, thank you.

I do not 'see' their or anyone else's 'god as nonexistent'. It's just a fact. There's nothing wrong whatsoever with having a 'Dawkinsish' position. I am surprised that you see it as pejorative. But then, where do you get your ideas? George Galloway?

[Prospero]

I was trying to discuss things in a more civilised way. You seem to wish to dwell in the realm of the intemperate. As indicated by your reference to me having got my ideas from the idiotic Galloway.

I do not malicious and false statements are you suggest. i was delving beneath the inflammatory remarks you make regularly on this subject to examine the logical outcomes of your ideas. . I do suspect you of a deeply held islamaphobia. You might have said that but go on to indicate it is the whole faith of islam that you find hostile to us.

So pray tell me where you find evidence for the assertion that the mainstream of islam would " would destroy our culture in an instant if it could. " Where does this come from exactly? Please provide your source.

You seem to know nothing of the longer history of the faith or its relation to Western civilisation to judge by your inflammatory posts on one of the world's great monotheistic faiths.

And my reference to Dawkins is a reflection of his hysterical opposition to religion without trying to really understand it despite his brilliance as a scientist . As to the existence of non existence of God that is a view - not a fact. It's a view we clearly share... possibly our only common ground.

[MacShreach]

Absurd statement. Anyone who does not understand the imperialist basis of Islam has never studied it. I suggest you do before making further comment. However, for the delectation of all:

Quran (4:104) - "And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain..."


Quran (47:3-4) - "Those who reject Allah follow vanities, while those who believe follow the truth from their lord. Thus does Allah set forth for men their lessons by similitudes. Therefore when you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks until when you have overcome them, then make (them) prisoners,"

Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

(The 'Jizya' is the poll tax for non-Muslims, also known as the dhimmi tax, and 'People of the Book' are Jews and Christians.)

I could go on all night. Of all the religious works I have studied, none condemns itself more completely, in its own words, than the Qu'ran. Now I will freely admit that I don't read Arabic, and have to rely on translations; however, the vast majority of the world's Muslims have to do the exact same, as do, for that matter, Christians.

[MacShreach]

Oh, and, we might not be able to prove that no god, anywhere, exists, but we most certainly can prove that the god of the Qu'ran, or Bible does not exist, and furthermore that these texts are inventions. Even Dawkins (who is most certainly not 'hysterical') accepts that the negative may never be proved, but any 'god' would have to be so remote and inconsequential as to be irrelevant. Human gods are human inventions; it's not a view or an opinion, it's just a demonstrable fact.

[Prospero]

Regarding God i share the view that it is necessary that it is existence rather than non existence that must be be proven. However that there can be no definitive proof of existence or non existence to me leaves the question - in the broadest sense - open.

It is wy I would describe myself as agnostic rather than atheist.

I respect the right of those who DO believe to practice their faith providing it does not impinge on the rights of others.

And as for the string of Quranic quotations you offer you clearly know full well that tens of thousands of scholars have argued over the meanings and interpretations of the Koran since it was first written. (Just as religious jews puzzle over very phrase in the Torah )
Also the context of its creation should be taken into consideration.
I re-iterate most contemporary Muslims do not believe in the conquest of the rest of the world and the imposition of Sharia. That a significant number DO is indeed a challenge to all of us.

[MacShreach]

Well, I have never, not once, denied the right of individuals to believe whatever superstitions or fantasies they want, from Spaghetti Monsters to Leprechauns. I also, very much, recognise the huge contribution that religion has made to human culture. However, I still have the right to tell them it's bollocks; that's freedom of speech. Note, however, were I to make a picture of Uncle Mo with a bomb in his turban I would find myself threatened with murder. So not everybody takes freedom of speech seriously.

There is much smokescreen as well as genuine debate. Many apologists totally ignore the doctrine of abrogation, without an understanding of which, along with the hadith, the Qu'ran is incomprehensible.

Context of its creation? What about that? Arabs were peaceful goddess-worshippers till Uncle Mo got imaginative. If you ask me they'd have been a lot better sticking with it.

[Prospero]

"Arabs were peaceful goddess-worshippers till Uncle Mo got imaginative.".. er no, they were feuding tribes much as they continued to be for centuries, especially in the arabian peninsula.

and I was not talking about whether you allow people to believe what they like. I was talking about the proof - or otherwise of the existence or non existence of God(s)

[MacShreach]

Kinda shot yer own point in the head there no? Islam didn't stop them killing each other, but it did make them a threat to others. So, OK, they were peacefully killing each other.

If you want to convince me a god exists, it's simple, prove it. I have no control over what people believe nor want it. But I can challenge false ones.

[yodajazz]

Kinda shot yer own point in the head there no? Islam didn't stop them killing each other, but it did make them a threat to others. So, OK, they were peacefully killing each other.

If you want to convince me a god exists, it's simple, prove it. I have no control over what people believe nor want it. But I can challenge false ones.

God, among other thing is a personification of Law. There are physical laws, or scientific laws. But there are also laws governing nature and human behaviors. We know that intelligence exists, and that intelligence can use laws to create. Air travel is one example, of overcoming the laws of gravity. There are things about humans that science has not found the answers to. Believing in God, presupposes that there are forces at work, beyond our current level of understanding.

A major thing that defines God is the concept of Love. Most understand that love is more than a simple emotion, of physical attraction. Such complex behaviors as sacrificing one's life in war, are described as acts of love. I'm curious as to how someone, who does not believe God exists, feels about the concept of Love in general?

There is one profound statement, that I love. It says this: ' God is Love and God is Law. Everyone thing in the universe that exists, is the result either Law or Love'. So if you believe that either, or both exist, you more or less believe in God.

[Prospero]

I am not interested in proving God exists. I don't believe it/he/she does. But I can't prove it one way or the other is all I'm saying - and i tend to think the onus is on proving that it DOES. So I remain agnostic. I beleive the idea of God is hugely powerful and I know that millions do believe.

Of course they were fighting. As were swedes, the celts, Welsh, mongols, goths etc etc etc.... hardly shoots myself in the foot at all. No Islam didn't stop them killing but it nor did Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism or atheism or communism etc
Violence is bred in the bone methinks.

[MacShreach]

God, among other thing is a personification of Law. There are physical laws, or scientific laws. But there are also laws governing nature and human behaviors. We know that intelligence exists, and that intelligence can use laws to create. Air travel is one example, of overcoming the laws of gravity. There are things about humans that science has not found the answers to. Believing in God, presupposes that there are forces at work, beyond our current level of understanding.

A major thing that defines God is the concept of Love. Most understand that love is more than a simple emotion, of physical attraction. Such complex behaviors as sacrificing one's life in war, are described as acts of love. I'm curious as to how someone, who does not believe God exists, feels about the concept of Love in general?

There is one profound statement, that I love. It says this: ' God is Love and God is Law. Everyone thing in the universe that exists, is the result either Law or Love'. So if you believe that either, or both exist, you more or less believe in God.


Ummmmmmm..no.

[yodajazz]

Well, I have never, not once, denied the right of individuals to believe whatever superstitions or fantasies they want, from Spaghetti Monsters to Leprechauns. I also, very much, recognise the huge contribution that religion has made to human culture. However, I still have the right to tell them it's bollocks; that's freedom of speech. Note, however, were I to make a picture of Uncle Mo with a bomb in his turban I would find myself threatened with murder. So not everybody takes freedom of speech seriously.

There is much smokescreen as well as genuine debate. Many apologists totally ignore the doctrine of abrogation, without an understanding of which, along with the hadith, the Qu'ran is incomprehensible.

Context of its creation? What about that? Arabs were peaceful goddess-worshippers till Uncle Mo got imaginative. If you ask me they'd have been a lot better sticking with it.

There is a verse in the Koran, which says 'there are no abrogations in the Koran'. Funny thing, is that even some Islamic scholars believe there are some in there. For those that don't know the word, it means that a statement, is over-ruled by a later statement. However, in the case of 'the Word of God', there can't be contradictions, since God, (called Allah, in this case), is supposed to be perfect. This is super important, on such issues such as whether Christians and Jews are in fact believers. It says they are in the Koran, even though there are latter verses which attack certain behaviors, and particular beliefs. For me, it comes down to the fact that that there are exceptions to every rule. The Haddith is supposed to help understand when the 'exceptions' apply.

There is an important verse in the Koran that says killing innocent people is wrong. I think that this would include most non-combatants. Apparently, some Muslims would include anyone in the military of the 'opposing force', as a combatant. I believe that when Bin Laden first issued his Fatawah, declaring war on the West it only included military personnel. So in this where the soldier was attacked, they may have been going by that definition.

I do believe that the issue of 'context' is super important when it comes to reaching an understanding to live in peace. Overall we can reach that understanding by uniting with all that want to live in Peace. And this includes the vast majority of Muslims, as well.

[yodajazz]

Ummmmmmm..no.

Explain Love, or even Charity. What about the many reported, near death experiences where people report seeing things while outside their bodies?

[Stavros]

And Stavros - Choudhary is a bit more than a "self appointed" spokesman. he is a conduit between hardliners and gullible young men.

This is feeble, how many students who wanted to change the world were inspired to waste hours, if not years of their lives because of Tony Cliff, Gerry Healy and Ted Grant? And even if you claim that the rank and file of the WRP, the Militant Tendency and the SWP did not murder soldiers, or anyone else for that matter, the Angry Brigade come to mind; as do Brigate Rosse, and the Rote Armee Fraktion: extreme wings of the socialist movement of which Provisional Sinn Fein also claimed to be a part. I once had an ugly row in a Labour Party meeting because someone from (P) Sinn Fein was going to talk at a Labour Party meeting in London (I think sponsored by Ken Livingstone) -one of the people there never spoke to me again, as if that mattered.

If people have broken the law, they should be arrested and tried, you can't lock people up because they think there should be a Caliphate and violent Jihad is the only way to achieve it. Violent revolution used to be on the agenda of 101 Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist, Maoist groups -and the Posadists, possibly the most obscure Revolutionary Front (they were a Marxist band from Argentina).

In 1979 the shock troops of the Ayatollah Khomeini described themselves as the 'Trotskyists of Islam', the 'gullible young men' you speak of have never been, and will never be in short supply, they all want to change the world. Most of them really just need to get laid.

[Stavros]

We belong to a culture that believes in the equality of all under the law, that men and women are of equal status and value, and that we can use democratic method to change the laws we live under. Islam, and yes, the mainstream of Islam, accepts absolutely none of that, and would destroy our culture in an instant if it could. The extent to which people from Islamic backgrounds can really integrate into Western culture, as opposed to setting up ghettos within it, is a function of the extent to which they are secularised.


I think to begin with, you could consider the Ottoman Middle East, which used to accommodate non-Muslims through a law which did not prosecute Jews or Christians under Islamic law, but allowed them -and indeed, some of the obscure religions and sects such as the Samaritans, the Druze, the Alawite, the Yazidi and so on- to live without prejudice and pay a special tax to the Empire as a result. It is perhaps a salutary lesson to the contemporary Jihadists that the Caliphate that they seek to restore recognised precisely the diversity they seek to erase: but these are particularly purists sorts of Muslim.

This in turn raises this argument of yours about the inherent opposition of mainstream Islam to modern concepts of democracy and equality, and the uncomfortable truth is that Muslims themselves have not been able to decide how to accommodate these aspects of modernity into their religion: Albert Hourani wrote a seminal book on this very subject, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1937 (Oxford University Press, 1962) in which the Muslim thinkers of his 'Liberal age' wrestled with the precise consequences for Islam of living in a world dominated by the non-Muslim empires, some of whom -notably the French and the British, arrived on the Arab/Muslim doorstep with, first Napoleon, then the British and the French (from 1901 onwards).

The consensus, in the absence of one overall authority for a billion Muslims, is that accommodation should be pragmatic -which is why Muslims who live in the West freely accept our laws, and, if you like, enjoy our freedoms without having to sign an oath -although signatures and declarations are made when Muslims become citizens of the USA and the UK, and with regard to your earlier point, the Irish who live in Britain and enjoy our freedoms were never asked to sign an oath of loyalty to the Queen and her Parliament- for that matter, what would happen if the Scots were -and in the future could be- asked to make such a declaration? The Queen is still head of state in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In the end, I think the argument about Islam as a religion is as futile as telling an Aborigine in Australia that there is no Dreamtime, that it is wrong for an illiterate Indian in the Amazon basin to believe there are spirits in the trees. There are a billion Muslims worldwide, there are a few thousand nutters. It was once said of the Great Fear in the French Revolution: ten men can make ten thousand tremble. The doctrinal disputes which enable Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan to stand out as the greatest contemporary mass murderers of Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan will not go away, yet the politics can be dealt with, because there are always political solutions to political problems. It is all to easy to go with the despair of Kipling:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/young_british_soldier.html

[nysprod]

It is all to easy to go with the despair of Kipling:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/young_british_soldier.html



Quite the ode, what...

[MacShreach]

I think to begin with, you could consider the Ottoman Middle East, which used to accommodate non-Muslims through a law which did not prosecute Jews or Christians under Islamic law, but allowed them -and indeed, some of the obscure religions and sects such as the Samaritans, the Druze, the Alawite, the Yazidi and so on- to live without prejudice and pay a special tax to the Empire as a result. It is perhaps a salutary lesson to the contemporary Jihadists that the Caliphate that they seek to restore recognised precisely the diversity they seek to erase: but these are particularly purists sorts of Muslim.

This in turn raises this argument of yours about the inherent opposition of mainstream Islam to modern concepts of democracy and equality, and the uncomfortable truth is that Muslims themselves have not been able to decide how to accommodate these aspects of modernity into their religion: Albert Hourani wrote a seminal book on this very subject, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1937 (Oxford University Press, 1962) in which the Muslim thinkers of his 'Liberal age' wrestled with the precise consequences for Islam of living in a world dominated by the non-Muslim empires, some of whom -notably the French and the British, arrived on the Arab/Muslim doorstep with, first Napoleon, then the British and the French (from 1901 onwards).

The consensus, in the absence of one overall authority for a billion Muslims, is that accommodation should be pragmatic -which is why Muslims who live in the West freely accept our laws, and, if you like, enjoy our freedoms without having to sign an oath -although signatures and declarations are made when Muslims become citizens of the USA and the UK, and with regard to your earlier point, the Irish who live in Britain and enjoy our freedoms were never asked to sign an oath of loyalty to the Queen and her Parliament- for that matter, what would happen if the Scots were -and in the future could be- asked to make such a declaration? The Queen is still head of state in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In the end, I think the argument about Islam as a religion is as futile as telling an Aborigine in Australia that there is no Dreamtime, that it is wrong for an illiterate Indian in the Amazon basin to believe there are spirits in the trees. There are a billion Muslims worldwide, there are a few thousand nutters. It was once said of the Great Fear in the French Revolution: ten men can make ten thousand tremble. The doctrinal disputes which enable Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan to stand out as the greatest contemporary mass murderers of Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan will not go away, yet the politics can be dealt with, because there are always political solutions to political problems. It is all to easy to go with the despair of Kipling:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/young_british_soldier.html

I would hardly describe having to pay a special tax because I refuse to accept someone else's religious ideas as being treated without prejudice; Islam permits adherents to do whatever they need to do to survive in dar al-harb but insists that wherever possible Sharia must be applied, which is why Muslims have been so vociferous in the attempt to achieve this in the UK; in the first place, I am a republican but on present terms, Liz Hanover will remain the head of state of Scotland, so an oath would be inappropriate, and in the second place, as a European citizen I am already permitted to live and work anywhere in the Union without such an oath BUT were such an unlikely thing as Scotland becoming a Republic, one or other of the nations leaving the EU AND my desiring to live in England (btdt) ever to occur and they wanted an oath, I would be happy to, as long as no Bibles or Qu'rans were involved.

Your nutter count is way out though. Look at what is happening in Egypt right now.

[Prospero]

stavros wrote: ""If people have broken the law, they should be arrested and tried, you can't lock people up because they think there should be a Caliphate and violent Jihad is the only way to achieve it. "

Why don't you read what i post a little more carefully - instead of regaling us with your old and "feeble" anecdotes about about the old radical left wing. I did not call for his arrest for his beliefs, however fatuous, or his speeches however hateful. I hardly care what he says - people can hold the most absurd opinons and say what they like. But when they facilitate the appearence of a man who incites murder - as Choudary has done - then that is sailing very close to the wind and should certainly be investigated.

As you should well know i am otherwise a strong advocate of freedom of speech and liberal values.

[Genetic]

If people have broken the law, they should be arrested and tried, you can't lock people up because they think there should be a Caliphate and violent Jihad is the only way to achieve it.

Does the word 'treason' mean anything to you? Of course you can lock people up for supporting a violent movement that intends to overthrow the government.

[Stavros]

Does the word 'treason' mean anything to you? Of course you can lock people up for supporting a violent movement that intends to overthrow the government.

The word treason is not enough, treason laws are still derived from the 1351 Act in which the core argument concerns violence against the Monarch and his or her Ministers -the last person to be tried for treason in the UK was William Joyce in 1945. Active 'volunteers' for the IRA, Provisional IRA and offshoots were not on trial for treason when arrested, but for criminal offences, though you could argue that by seeking to remove the British from Northern Ireland and merging it with the Republic in the south they were seeking to 'overthrow the government' -the contradictions of this law were exposed when a) those men who had bombed and assassinated in 'the Troubles' were treated as common criminals so not tried under Treason law; but b) were given the status of political prisoners under the Good Friday Agreement and let out of prison, including the Active Service Unit who were also known as the Balcombe Street Gang.

The Government did consider trying radical preachers and others under treason legislation in 2005, but it has not happened. I think the difficulty is in asserting the difference between 'overthrowing the state' and physically attacking members of the Royal Family and the Government with a view to directly replacing them that lawyers would insist upon: Joyce was a traitor because he worked for the Nazi's who were actively seeking to become the alternative government; and was the last person hanged for the offence; the death penalty for treason was abolished in 1998. I don't think Radical Preachers like Amjam Choudhary actually want to replace Queen Elizabeth as the head of state in the UK an are campaigning to do so.

Case not proven. If you don't like it, change the law.

[praetorian]

The two killers could ostensibly tried for treason as a soldier is a crown servant and as such attacking a soldier is the same as attacking the queen herself.....................however they will be tried for murder as common criminals as to try them for treason would imply that they are members of an organisation hostile to the government and the police/government will not want to give them that recognition or do anything which will publicise their act even more which was their aim in the first place. You can bet they will be locked up for the rest of their lives though ironically enough just down the road from the place they commited their despicable act in Belmarsh where the chances of them both staying unmaimed by the other prisoners will be fairly slim at best, they won't even be remembered as martyrs as they both had council flats one was in government funded education and they were both on benefits.........yeah those guys were really oppressed muslims......NOT, hope they enjoy there stay in prison looking over their shoulders for the rest of their hopefully short lives!

[Prospero]

The voice of mainstream Islam in the UK.

Ajmal Masroor Sky News Interview - Woolwich Terrorist Attack - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00WRRD7Yud4)

[Cecil Rhodes]

The two killers could ostensibly tried for treason as a soldier is a crown servant and as such attacking a soldier is the same as attacking the queen herself.....................however they will be tried for murder as common criminals as to try them for treason would imply that they are members of an organisation hostile to the government and the police/government will not want to give them that recognition or do anything which will publicise their act even more which was their aim in the first place. You can bet they will be locked up for the rest of their lives though ironically enough just down the road from the place they commited their despicable act in Belmarsh where the chances of them both staying unmaimed by the other prisoners will be fairly slim at best, they won't even be remembered as martyrs as they both had council flats one was in government funded education and they were both on benefits.........yeah those guys were really oppressed muslims......NOT, hope they enjoy there stay in prison looking over their shoulders for the rest of their hopefully short lives!


Well the government will still be funding them so they will have nothing to worry about . Personally I think they should be made neighbors of the IRA where ever they end up . That ought to be fun getting them together .

[Stavros]

The two killers could ostensibly tried for treason as a soldier is a crown servant and as such attacking a soldier is the same as attacking the queen herself.....................however they will be tried for murder as common criminals as to try them for treason would imply that they are members of an organisation hostile to the government and the police/government will not want to give them that recognition or do anything which will publicise their act even more which was their aim in the first place. You can bet they will be locked up for the rest of their lives though ironically enough just down the road from the place they commited their despicable act in Belmarsh where the chances of them both staying unmaimed by the other prisoners will be fairly slim at best, they won't even be remembered as martyrs as they both had council flats one was in government funded education and they were both on benefits.........yeah those guys were really oppressed muslims......NOT, hope they enjoy there stay in prison looking over their shoulders for the rest of their hopefully short lives!

I think it is the difference between law and politics: legally being a Republican in the United Kingdom can only be a few steps away from treason; the radical left may have called for a revolution in years gone by, but never actually called for the violent overthrow of the state, as far as I am aware; if there was an oath of loyalty for all, would Republicans take it if their opposition to the monarchy was so strong they could not in all conscience take it? Those MP's who want Britain to be a Republic are obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown: are they hypocrites for doing so? The first woman elected to the Commons, Con Markiewicz won her seat for Sinn Fein in the 1918 election but refused to take her seat, as did all elected Sinn Fein MP's precisely because Sinn Fein rejected British rule, and thus the Crown in Ireland. The Civil War that followed the treaty in 1921 was in large part driven by the 'Free State' remaining in the Commonwealth with the obligation on members of the Irish Parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the King.

Politically, the law on treason allows a lot of hostile comment on the State as long as it does not actively seek to assassinate members of the Royal Family and the Government and replace it with an alternative; soldiers are not civil servants. Indeed, every five years Parliament must approve the funding of a standing army in times of peace, as per the 1689 Bill of Rights. This means, in theory, that if the Government failed to win the vote on the Estimates, the Army, Navy and Air Force would have to be disbanded. Another example of how the letter of the law is trumped by politics.

[praetorian]

I think it is the difference between law and politics: legally being a Republican in the United Kingdom can only be a few steps away from treason; the radical left may have called for a revolution in years gone by, but never actually called for the violent overthrow of the state, as far as I am aware; if there was an oath of loyalty for all, would Republicans take it if their opposition to the monarchy was so strong they could not in all conscience take it? Those MP's who want Britain to be a Republic are obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown: are they hypocrites for doing so? The first woman elected to the Commons, Con Markiewicz won her seat for Sinn Fein in the 1918 election but refused to take her seat, as did all elected Sinn Fein MP's precisely because Sinn Fein rejected British rule, and thus the Crown in Ireland. The Civil War that followed the treaty in 1921 was in large part driven by the 'Free State' remaining in the Commonwealth with the obligation on members of the Irish Parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the King.

Politically, the law on treason allows a lot of hostile comment on the State as long as it does not actively seek to assassinate members of the Royal Family and the Government and replace it with an alternative; soldiers are not civil servants. Indeed, every five years Parliament must approve the funding of a standing army in times of peace, as per the 1689 Bill of Rights. This means, in theory, that if the Government failed to win the vote on the Estimates, the Army, Navy and Air Force would have to be disbanded. Another example of how the letter of the law is trumped by politics.

I'm not taking anyones side here & don't want to get into a slanging match, each argument has merits & flaws, I was just stating how I see things going from here and that I think what the killers did was despicable. Are soldiers civil servants, probably not but I never said that they were, they are crown servants as per section 12 of the official secrets act, not gonna dig the whole thing out but here is an extract:

Section 12(1) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 defines the expression "Crown servant" for the purposes of that Act. It now provides:


In this Act "Crown servant" means - (a) a Minister of the Crown; [(aa) a member of the Scottish Executive or a junior Scottish Minister;] [(ab) the First Minister for Wales, a Welsh Minister appointed under section 48 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, the Counsel General to the Welsh Assembly Government or a Deputy Welsh Minister;] (b) . . . (c) any person employed in the civil service of the Crown, including Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, the civil service of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Court Service; (d) any member of the naval, military or air forces of the Crown, including any person employed by an association established for the purposes of [Part XI of the Reserve Forces Act 1996]; (e) any constable and any other person employed or appointed in or for the purposes of any police force [(including the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland Reserve)][or of the Serious Organised Crime Agency]; (f) any person who is a member or employee of a prescribed body or a body of a prescribed class and either is prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph or belongs to a prescribed class of members or employees of any such body; (g) any person who is the holder of a prescribed office or who is an employee of such a holder and either is prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph or belongs to a prescribed class of such employees.

so you are probably right in what you said apart from one small point.

[Prospero]

This is an interesting article from the Eurasia review which details some of the complexities that both Right and Left refuse to acknowledge when discussing islam.


Terrorism, The West, And The Real ‘Betrayal Of Islam’ – OpEd

May 25, 2013




By Angel Millar

Last week, a British man of Nigerian origin beheaded a soldier on a crowded South London street, in the middle of the day. The killer, who had accomplices, reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack, and, afterward, still holding the machete and with hands bloodied, told onlookers that, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you [the British].” His words were recorded on video.

In what has become more or less the stock response to such outrages, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the murder was “a betrayal of Islam” and that there could be nothing in the religion that “justifies this truly dreadful act.”

But, to borrow from the subtitle of Dr. Frank Lutz’s book Words That Work, it’s not what you say; it’s what people hear. And, inevitably what people hear – often for weeks after such attacks – is “Islam” and “Muslims.”

The level of commentary about the religion and its faithful has remained extraordinarily – frankly, pathetically – low.

Western, non-Muslim defenders of Islam tend to be “liberal,” and are concerned with identity politics – women’s rights, gay rights, and so on. They, typically, are not really concerned with, and don’t know very much about, the religion itself. Instead of discussing Whabism and Salafism, Shi’ism, Sufism, etc., liberals inevitably talk of moderate and extremist Muslims (as if there were a sliding scale in which conviction and violence somehow go along together). Instead of talking about ijtihad, haqiqa and batin, the sayings of Imam Ali, or the Imamite, etc., Western liberals ask us to imagine “Islam” as a kind of proto-Western liberalism, inventing women’s rights, and so on.

For the Western pundit – whether for or against the faith – “Islam,” is a kind of fiction. It’s slotted into the narrative already advocated by one political side or other, and serves as fodder for it.

In the wake of the 2001 9/11 attacks, it was proposed – to a large extent plausibly – that al-Qaeda had attacked America (“the far enemy”) as part of its strategy against “the near enemy.” The theory was that the attack would help win converts to al-Qaeda and its particular ideology. Today, “Islam” has become the battlefield on which the Right-wing and Left-wing of various Western states are, politically, fighting each other. It’s convenient. Neither side wants to understand the complexities.

Although barely acknowledged, Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev is known to have attacked a fellow Muslim, online, because the latter had converted to Shi’a Islam. I think we can safely say that the South London attackers – at least one of which has been connected to the banned al-Muhajiroun group – would share this hatred. Just as they would undoubtedly have hated Sunni Sufis, Ismaelis, Alawites, among other Muslims.

While it’s not clear what exactly the Boston bombers and Southeast London killers believed, it seems clear enough that they, like so many terrorists, adhered to a Salafi/Wahhabi worldview, accented, no doubt, by Islamism.

Although sometimes believed to be a politically correct way of speaking about “Islam,” Islamism can be defines as a modernist, political form of Wahhabism, influenced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Neither Arabic nor Persian nor Islamic, the Protocols was written by the Tsarist secret police a little more than a century ago. It represents a paranoid worldview. But its fundamental purpose is to divide the world into them and us, allies and enemies, with the latter alleged to be everywhere at all times. One enemy can be exchanged for another. And yet it is taught as part of the Saudi Arabian curriculum.

Why do we never hear about Wahhabism or Salafism, especially in relation to those acts of violence it gives rise to? It’s complicated. Getting granular with Islam isn’t going to support the agenda of the political Left or Right in the West.

Moreover, contrary to how they see themselves, Western elites are extraordinarily provincial. If you want to discuss violence against minorities in Pakistan, the “worldly,” usually self-identified “Left-wing” Westerner is going to change the subject to the treatment minorities in the USA or whichever state he resides. If the Koran is mentioned, the worldly individual wants to change the subject to the Bible. If the subject is Jihad, then the subject is changed to the Crusades. Nothing can be discussed unless it’s Western or in the tourist guide to a region or religion. As such, nothing non-Western can be understood.

But, the problem isn’t confined to the Left, so called. Those on “the Right” who urged the toppling of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi and were stunned when al-Qaeda-linked militias turned up in Libya, still advocated for the toppling of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and were equally shocked that history, predictably, repeated itself.

Similarly, on the so-called Right, Wahhabism and Salafism are simply conflated with Islam. When liberal and self-described “reformist” Muslim and author Irshad Manji and her entourage were attacked by Salafists in Indonesia, the event was reported in the media, and commented on – largely to condemn Manji as an irrelevance – on certain blogs. No one bothered to notice that the Banser militia, of the Muslim Nahdlatul Ulama movement, turned up to protect the author. (Banser has also protected Indonesia’s churches during Christmas time.)

But, despite the ignorance, geopolitics plays a very large role in keeping us talking about “Islam” after every terrorist attack. With Saudi Arabia and Pakistan regarded as key allies of the West – especially, and farcically, in combating al-Qaeda – there is no desire to mention, let alone to discuss, Wahhabism and its South Asian variant Salafism.

Frankly, we’d rather deny it was Islam and look moral, than say it was Wahhabism or Salafism, and have our alliances with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (not to mention our moral uprightness) questioned.

Yet, this is the ideology that is fuelling violence, and not just in Boston and south London. In Pakistan, Shi’a Muslims are routinely targeted for terror attacks, as are Sunni Sufis and Sufi shrines, as are Hindu girls (who are frequently targeted for rape and conversion) and other minorities.

In Saudi Arabia, the Shi’a are treated as second-class citizens, and Shi’a cleric, and advocate for Shi’a rights, Ayatollah Nimr Baqr al-Nimr has recently been sentenced to death for blasphemy.

Where’s the outrage by those Western pundits normally so concerned with human rights? Where’s the discussion about Wahhabism and Salafism? There isn’t any. And that, to borrow the British Prime Minister’s words, is the real betrayal of Islam.

[yosi]

The voice of mainstream Islam in the UK.




Prospero . do you know what Jihad means?

this one was already posted before by MacShreach ........

[Stavros]

I'm not taking anyones side here & don't want to get into a slanging match, each argument has merits & flaws, I was just stating how I see things going from here and that I think what the killers did was despicable. Are soldiers civil servants, probably not but I never said that they were, they are crown servants as per section 12 of the official secrets act, not gonna dig the whole thing out but here is an extract:

Section 12(1) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 defines the expression "Crown servant" for the purposes of that Act. It now provides:


In this Act "Crown servant" means - (a) a Minister of the Crown; [(aa) a member of the Scottish Executive or a junior Scottish Minister;] [(ab) the First Minister for Wales, a Welsh Minister appointed under section 48 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, the Counsel General to the Welsh Assembly Government or a Deputy Welsh Minister;] (b) . . . (c) any person employed in the civil service of the Crown, including Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, the civil service of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Court Service; (d) any member of the naval, military or air forces of the Crown, including any person employed by an association established for the purposes of [Part XI of the Reserve Forces Act 1996]; (e) any constable and any other person employed or appointed in or for the purposes of any police force [(including the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland Reserve)][or of the Serious Organised Crime Agency]; (f) any person who is a member or employee of a prescribed body or a body of a prescribed class and either is prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph or belongs to a prescribed class of members or employees of any such body; (g) any person who is the holder of a prescribed office or who is an employee of such a holder and either is prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph or belongs to a prescribed class of such employees.

so you are probably right in what you said apart from one small point.

Thanks for the quote -it is going to sound like sophistry, but I think that the Official Secrets Act appears to put a lot of people into one category who in other laws are separate, or who are affected in different ways by other laws -ultimately I think unless there is a legal challenge under this act or another, the difficulty of using treason as the law when prosecuting is avoided, possibly because it might be harder to get a conviction. For example, a terrorist tried under the criminal law for murder, may have a better chance of being convicted than under the laws relating to Treason. None of this is satisfactory, perhaps we are actually dealing with crimes that need a re-definition of, or more exact clarification of, the law.

[Stavros]

Prospero . do you know what Jihad means?

this one was already posted before by MacShreach ........

Yosi the problem is that Jihad, like the word Hijab, has a contested meaning. For most Muslims, Jihad is a form of struggle against the temptations of doing wrong, it is considered an internal, spiritual fight rather than the taking up of arms to attack or defend a person or a place, or the religion if that is under attack -but yes, this latter is also a meaning of Jihad.

During the First World War, for example, the Ottoman Empire, having formed an alliance with the German Empire in November 1914, declared their conflict with the Christian Empires to be a 'Holy War' -it was, in other words, a Jihad. The Germans failed to use this call to Jihad to incite Muslims in India to rise up and weaken Britain from within, it had little effect in fact, Indians were numerically most of the Indian Army that fought for the British Empire against the Ottoman armies in what is now Iraq.
You then have a situation in Makka in early 1916 when the Hashemite Sharif, Hussein ibn Ali, who had by then formed a secret alliance with the British, attacked the Ottoman garrison, taking control of Makka in July. The Hashemites then organised irregular guerillas and more conventional troops to attack the Ottoman forces in the desert area between what is now Saudi Arabia and Syria, while Allenby marched out of Egypt on the western side through Sinai and Palestine. Since many of the Ottoman troops on both fronts were Arab, and Muslim (but there were also other religions and nationalities in the officer classes and the regulars, from Turks and Kurds to Armenians and Albanians) -you have a Jihad being waged by the Ottoman Empire against infidel Empires, yet it is in alliance with an infidel Empire, and on the ground Muslim is fighting Muslim.

Declaring a Jihad was one of the Ottoman Empire's mistakes, just as most Muslims think it is an outrage for the extremists to use Jihad as an excuse for acts of violence against non-believers, or those Muslims who for doctrinal reasons declares other Muslims apostates or heretics, and so on and so on.

[MacShreach]

Yosi the problem is that Jihad, like the word Hijab, has a contested meaning. For most Muslims, Jihad is a form of struggle against the temptations of doing wrong, it is considered an internal, spiritual fight rather than the taking up of arms to attack or defend a person or a place, or the religion if that is under attack -but yes, this latter is also a meaning of Jihad.

During the First World War, for example, the Ottoman Empire, having formed an alliance with the German Empire in November 1914, declared their conflict with the Christian Empires to be a 'Holy War' -it was, in other words, a Jihad. The Germans failed to use this call to Jihad to incite Muslims in India to rise up and weaken Britain from within, it had little effect in fact, Indians were numerically most of the Indian Army that fought for the British Empire against the Ottoman armies in what is now Iraq.
You then have a situation in Makka in early 1916 when the Hashemite Sharif, Hussein ibn Ali, who had by then formed a secret alliance with the British, attacked the Ottoman garrison, taking control of Makka in July. The Hashemites then organised irregular guerillas and more conventional troops to attack the Ottoman forces in the desert area between what is now Saudi Arabia and Syria, while Allenby marched out of Egypt on the western side through Sinai and Palestine. Since many of the Ottoman troops on both fronts were Arab, and Muslim (but there were also other religions and nationalities in the officer classes and the regulars, from Turks and Kurds to Armenians and Albanians) -you have a Jihad being waged by the Ottoman Empire against infidel Empires, yet it is in alliance with an infidel Empire, and on the ground Muslim is fighting Muslim.

Declaring a Jihad was one of the Ottoman Empire's mistakes, just as most Muslims think it is an outrage for the extremists to use Jihad as an excuse for acts of violence against non-believers, or those Muslims who for doctrinal reasons declares other Muslims apostates or heretics, and so on and so on.

This 'spiritual' meaning of 'jihad' is very dubious. It became popularised in the 19th century amongst secularised muslims. However, armed jihad is still at the core of Islamic belief; Islam only bides its time until it is in a position to strike. Many moderate muslims doubtless deprecate this, but seeking reform of Islam is doomed to failure since Wahhabism is the 'reformed' tradition, a direct reaction against what it sees as the 'soft' and anti-Qu'ranic, liberal, secular and moderate traditions. Any attempt to reform this faith inevitably refers back to the Qu'ran and hadith, which are a totalitarian formula for global domination, and these cannot be amended, since they are, muslims think, the immutable word of 'god' as transmitted through the angel Gabriel. It's a pointless exercise.

I have never said that I am against Pakistanis, Afghanis, Indonesians or whomever moving to the West to better lives, and I am not. Indeed, many other Asians, for example, Hindus and Buddhists, do make the same move and integrate fully. You don't hear about too many Hindu or Buddhist terrorists. The problem is not the people (Pakistanis are Indians), but their aggressive and reprehensible cult of violence and male honour.

Indeed there are some secular muslim societies which remain oases of common sense, such as Bosnia Herzegovina. But you only have to look to Egypt or Turkey to see how fragile these societies are.

However, where any immigrant culture is in conflict with European culture, those holding it need to understand that it, or at least the conflicted elements of it, must be abandoned or modified. Multi-ethnical societies can indeed work well, but 'multiculturalism' simply cannot work if the host culture is expected to accommodate another culture that is sworn to destroy everything it stands for. I don't pretend to understand the bizarrely closeted mind-set that thinks otherwise.

Therefore, immigrant cultures must integrate into the host culture and fully accept all its values, and not behave like a cancer awaiting the opportunity to destroy it. It matters not if muslims think as they do because they believe in the word of an illiterate, paedophilic camel herder. Religion is just a belief but a threat of violence os real and it needs to be addressed.

There is absolutely no question whatsoever that all the jihadist attackers in Europe have had support from the broader muslim community, whatever muslim apologists may say. Even where they were not being given material aid and moral support, they were assisted by friends, acquaintances and relatives simply staying quiet about what they were doing, because, as muslims, they believe they are not allowed to betray another muslim.

In other words, it is more important to them to be a good muslim than to be good citizens of the state they live in, and we must challenge this.

Until all muslims in Europe accept that if they have knowledge of anyone threatening or attempting armed jihad then they must immediately inform the authorities, we have no choice but to regard the whole community as a potential vector for terrorism. If they come to Europe, they must become Europeans. It really is that simple.

If Iwere stupid enough to go and live in Saudi Arabia, then I would have to accept that I would be obliged to live by the law, moral code and cultural standards of that place. Anyone coming to Europe must undertake the same commitment and live by European standards, codes and laws, or suffer penalty under law.

In the end, this lily-livered accommodationist, appeasing pish is all because people for some bizarre reason, think that religions should get special treatment. If these were, say, communists or anarchists, and they aided and abetted individuals within their numbers in carrying out or threatening acts of violence against the host culture, their feet wouldn't see the ground on the way to jail.

[Stavros]

This 'spiritual' meaning of 'jihad' is very dubious. It became popularised in the 19th century amongst secularised muslims. However, armed jihad is still at the core of Islamic belief; Islam only bides its time until it is in a position to strike. Many moderate muslims doubtless deprecate this, but seeking reform of Islam is doomed to failure since Wahhabism is the 'reformed' tradition, a direct reaction against what it sees as the 'soft' and anti-Qu'ranic, liberal, secular and moderate traditions. Any attempt to reform this faith inevitably refers back to the Qu'ran and hadith, which are a totalitarian formula for global domination, and these cannot be amended, since they are, muslims think, the immutable word of 'god' as transmitted through the angel Gabriel. It's a pointless exercise.
--Sorry, Mac this is nonsense. The Saudis and their devoted followers might like to believe that what you call 'Wahabism' "'is the 'reformed' tradition.." but millions of other Muslims would dispute that and indeed, it is at the core of the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia -in addition to which there are Ibadi, Ismaili, Sufi and smaller and obscure traditions of Islam which are very real to those who practice it and which do not accept the Wahabi version. If Arabs at the time of Muhammad did not know what the whole world was like, how could their religion be considered a 'totalitarian formula for global domination'? -this is an assertion of a fact post hoc ergo propter hoc and frankly daft: you might as well argue the same for the Catholic Church which, on historical evidence, was more efficient -and in context of the times- more successful in global domination...

I have never said that I am against Pakistanis, Afghanis, Indonesians or whomever moving to the West to better lives, and I am not. Indeed, many other Asians, for example, Hindus and Buddhists, do make the same move and integrate fully. You don't hear about too many Hindu or Buddhist terrorists. The problem is not the people (Pakistanis are Indians), but their aggressive and reprehensible cult of violence and male honour.
--Come on Mac, who assassinated Indira Gandhi? -a Sikh. Who assassinated her son Rajiv? -a Hindu. The Tamil Tigers have been one of the most ruthless terrorist (national liberation?) organisations of recent years, credited with being the first after Japanese Kamikaze pilots in WW2 to practice suicide missions. Who is murdering the Muslims and destroying their property in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand if not the Buddhists? Does it mean that when it is sponsored by Government this violence is acceptable? When did the Muslims of any of those three countries mount an insurrection to overthrow the Buddhist state to create an Islamic one?

However, where any immigrant culture is in conflict with European culture, those holding it need to understand that it, or at least the conflicted elements of it, must be abandoned or modified. Multi-ethnical societies can indeed work well, but 'multiculturalism' simply cannot work if the host culture is expected to accommodate another culture that is sworn to destroy everything it stands for. I don't pretend to understand the bizarrely closeted mind-set that thinks otherwise.
--Don't fully understand this: on the one hand we allow Muslims and Jews to slaughter animals in accordance with their laws, Kosher and Halal practices are therefore not 'abandoned' or outlawed because they are in conflict with British or European culture; similarly we have not made it illegal for Jews or Muslims to use their Beth Din, or Shari'a law for some issues, such as family law; just as we have outlawed forced marriages among Hindus, and infibulation and so on. None of these pose a threat of destruction to British or European culture as Jews and Muslims are a small percentage of the population and their rituals are even less likely to have an impact outside their own communities.

Therefore, immigrant cultures must integrate into the host culture and fully accept all its values, and not behave like a cancer awaiting the opportunity to destroy it. It matters not if muslims think as they do because they believe in the word of an illiterate, paedophilic camel herder. Religion is just a belief but a threat of violence os real and it needs to be addressed.
--Muhammad was neither a camel herder nor a paedophile; violence has been endemic in all religions, except, I presume, the Jains, and other religions I am not familiar with. Why make an exception of Islam?

There is absolutely no question whatsoever that all the jihadist attackers in Europe have had support from the broader muslim community, whatever muslim apologists may say. Even where they were not being given material aid and moral support, they were assisted by friends, acquaintances and relatives simply staying quiet about what they were doing, because, as muslims, they believe they are not allowed to betray another muslim.
--Sorry, Mac, this is an insult to all those Muslims in Britain who have been horrified by the acts of violence carried out in their name -not least those who lost relatives in the London Underground, for example, on 7/7; it also flies in the face of the various inter-faith groups and youth groups established after 2005 to deal precisely with the problem of young people being vulnerable to radical thinking. You might as well say that every Irish person who supports the idea of a United Ireland is an apologist for the IRA regardless of their attitude to bombings and assassinations.
al-Qaeda bombings in East Africa, and 9/11 itself led to a split in al-Qaeda over the issue of 'international operations', as well as aggressive condemnation in Saudi Arabia all documented by Maha Azzam.

Until all muslims in Europe accept that if they have knowledge of anyone threatening or attempting armed jihad then they must immediately inform the authorities, we have no choice but to regard the whole community as a potential vector for terrorism. If they come to Europe, they must become Europeans. It really is that simple.
--Can you agree that during the Troubles, everyone from Ireland or of Irish extraction living in the UK was a 'potential vector for terrorism'? In the case of the USA, why are there St Patrick's Day marches in major cities like New York and Chicago if those people are American? Why does the UK allow the Chinese New Year to be celebrated in Chinatown by generations of Chinese immigrants -what's British about it?

In the end, this lily-livered accommodationist, appeasing pish is all because people for some bizarre reason, think that religions should get special treatment. If these were, say, communists or anarchists, and they aided and abetted individuals within their numbers in carrying out or threatening acts of violence against the host culture, their feet wouldn't see the ground on the way to jail.

In addition to my edited comments to your post:
I think the one difference from previous political movements which challenged the state, is indeed their religious character or background: socialism, varieties of fascism and nationalism have been particularly aggressive in Europe, the problem, which you are not easy to deal with, is that religions contain such a diversity of sects, beliefs and practices, that is difficult and incoherent to damn an entire religion because of what some of its believers do. At the core, we are in any case dealing with politics, because the radical's agenda is primarily political, and it is at that level I think we should be levelling our critiques.

[nysprod]

Anti-Muslim Threats Rise in Britain After Soldier’s Killing

By JOHN F. BURNS

LONDON — Despite calls by British politicians and religious leaders for calm, there has been a rise in threats and invective against Muslims across the country in the wake of the killing of an off-duty soldier on a London street by two men who shouted Islamic invocations after they hacked at the soldier with cleavers.

The police and Muslim community groups have said that anti-Muslim episodes have occurred in many parts of the country, with the most common involving the posting of derogatory — and, the police said, in some cases inflammatory — messages on social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook.

A number of arrests have been made, with criminal charges being leveled in some cases under laws against inciting racial or religious hatred, and Muslim community leaders have reported rising concern among the estimated 2.5 million Muslims who live in Britain.

Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, a group that seeks to promote harmony between religious groups, said in a BBC interview on Saturday that the anti-Muslim episodes have included graffiti being scrawled on the walls and windows of mosques and Muslim-owned businesses, women’s head scarves being yanked off and verbal abuse. He described the occurrences as “quite aggressive” and “very focused.”

“What’s really concerning is the spread of these incidents,” Mr. Mughal said. “They’re coming in from right across the country.”

[MacShreach]

Sorry Stavros, but I'm not engaging your diversionary tactice. I am not discussing the situation in the Far East (ever hear of East Timor btw) or the muslim terrorists cutting the arms off little girls in the Philippines. I am not discussing the Irish either, since the IRA's political ends can in no way be compared to Islam's.

I won't go into the documented record that Uncle Mo was both a trader in camels and illiterate (according to his own record) so I guess you better just do some more homework, huh.

And if you think I sound curmudgeonly, tough. I am a parent, and if you don't think a man who marries a girl when she is six and rapes her when she is nine is a paedophile, then you and I have absolutely nothing further to say to each other.

[yosi]

French authorities are investigating whether the stabbing of a soldier in a Paris suburb was a copycat attack in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, killed in London this week.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22669367

[Stavros]

Sorry Stavros, but I'm not engaging your diversionary tactice. I am not discussing the situation in the Far East (ever hear of East Timor btw) or the muslim terrorists cutting the arms off little girls in the Philippines. I am not discussing the Irish either, since the IRA's political ends can in no way be compared to Islam's.

I won't go into the documented record that Uncle Mo was both a trader in camels and illiterate (according to his own record) so I guess you better just do some more homework, huh.

And if you think I sound curmudgeonly, tough. I am a parent, and if you don't think a man who marries a girl when she is six and rapes her when she is nine is a paedophile, then you and I have absolutely nothing further to say to each other.

I don't see it as a diversionary tactic to point out that there have been examples of atrocities committed by Buddhists and Hindus, rather it is denial on your part because of an obsession with Islam as the main perpetrator of such things, even when the agenda is political rather than religious. The Tamil Tigers feature in all serious analysis of 'suicide missions', to discount them is absurd in the context of this debate. Your assertions about Muhammad are biased, there are other accounts which say he consummated his marriage to Ayesha when she was a teenager, but it doesn't fit the stereotype you need. But as you say, unless the debate is serious enough to unravel the myths and identify the core problems, which are political, this debate will just go round in circles.

[Prospero]

"Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims'

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b181276c-c5c1-11e2-99d1-00144feab7de.html#axzz2UQQvSWX4


From this weekend's Financial Times....

Maoist rebels kill 28 in attack on Indian political convoy
By James Crabtree in Mumbai




Maoist rebels have staged a daring attack on a convoy in the state of Chhattisgarh, killing 28 people, including two senior politicians from the Congress party.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party leader, travelled to Chhattisgarh after the attack, which as one of the bloodiest in recent times marks an escalation in India’s long-running Maoist insurgency.

“Naturally we are devastated,” Mrs Gandhi said on Sunday. “It is despicable that ordinary people engaged in political activity were attacked.”
Rahul Gandhi, Mrs Gandhi’s son and another prominent Congress party figure, said the incident was “an attack on democracy”.
One of the politicians killed, Mahendra Karma, was a former leader of the Congress opposition in the state, which is governed by the Hindu nationalist BJP party. He had also been the public face of a prominent local counterinsurgency campaign, in which state forces armed militia groups as part of a plan to counter rebel activities.
Nand Kumar Patel, head of the Congress party in the state, was also killed, having initially been abducted along with his son and a number of others caught up in the attack, according to Indian media reports.
Large parts of central India suffer from violence linked to radical leftwing guerrilla groups, known as the Naxalites, which operate in an area spanning several states that is often referred to as the country’s “red corridor”.
The districts most affected by the insurgency are typically poor and rural, with large tribal populations. However, areas such as southern Chhattisgarh also contain some of India’s richest untapped deposits of minerals, including iron ore and coal, creating commercial pressure to end the violence.
Analysts say that in recent years both the rebel groups and the Indian authorities have toughened their approach to the conflict, rejecting moves for peace talks and moving to escalate military activities.
“The government has had the completely wrong approach to this,” said Nandini Sundar, a professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. “Of late, there has been a general hardening of attitudes on both sides and, sadly, what we are now seeing is a move to no-holds barred war on both sides, of which this attack is just an example.”
Some of India’s largest businesses, including the Tata and Essar conglomerates, operate industrial and mining facilities in Chhattisgarh, although ongoing violence has limited their operations.
“There are a lot of companies in the northern half of the state, but in the south they can’t really start mining because of the fighting,” Ms Sunder said. “So there is a lot of pressure from that side on the government to get rid of the Maoists, so it can begin.”

[Prospero]

This report was from the Telegraph a couple of weeks back. Funny that it hasn't prompted hate messages here against the racists who killed this grandfather.... But then... thank God... perhaps he was part of the Muslim conspiracy to kill us all....
[
[Racist fear in Birmingham murder of Muslim grandfather
A racist killer was feared to be on the loose in Birmingham last night after a 75-year-old Muslim grandfather was murdered on his way home from evening prayer.

Mohammed Saleem, who walked with a stick, was knifed four times in the back so viciously on Monday night that the wounds penetrated his chest.
The father-of seven, who had no “defensive wounds”, was not robbed and his family have said there was no reason they knew why anyone would want to hurt him.
Yesterday, West Midlands Police launched a public appeal to trace a suspect caught on CCTV near the scene of the attack, which detectives believe could be racially motivated.
Det Supt Mark Payne, the officer in charge of the inquiry, admitted the possibility it was a racist attack was a “significant line of inquiry".
A retired baker with five daughters, two sons and 22 grandchildren, Mr Saleem had lived in Little Green Lane, Small Heath, Birmingham, with his wife, Said Begum, 69, for 40 years.
Mr Payne said the issue of motive was "wide open" but Mr Saleem followed the same route to the mosque, five times a day, and never carried any money.
He added: "To the attacker I say we will find you and we will bring you to justice.
“Anybody capable of stabbing a 75-year-old man in the back three times needs to be in jail and that's where we will put them."
In an emotional family appeal, two of Mr Saleem's daughters Shazia Khan, 45, who lives in London and Nazia Maqsood, 44, urged the attacker to hand themselves in.
Mrs Khan said she believed it was "a pre-meditated brutal attack, pre-planned, intended to kill".
Officers said they want to trace a white man, aged 25 to 32, of medium height and build, caught on camera running near the scene around 10.30pm, the time of the attack.
Mr Payne said the man was seen wearing "a distinctive beanie hat with a ribbed or striped pattern", a light-coloured top and dark bottoms.
Police also want to trace a seven-seat people carrier captured on CCTV, driving near the mosque with the two male occupants, both white men in their 30s, who are considered "significant witnesses".
No arrests have yet been made.

[yodajazz]

This 'spiritual' meaning of 'jihad' is very dubious. It became popularised in the 19th century amongst secularised muslims. However, armed jihad is still at the core of Islamic belief;

Spirituality is at the core of most religions including Islam. Most all people want to find a life of everyday happiness, that would include a family or community, some material comfort, that might come from a job for example. You cannot leave out food, and sex, laughter and other emotional needs. Spirituality, in general provides comfort, in so much as we see our connection to each other, from a common source, which is defined as God, (or Allah for Muslims).

Yes there is a political element in Islam, as the Prophet was also a warrior-general, and administrator. But he also had a long period, at first when he was a mystic who had revelations from an angel. Those Muslims who do resort to violence because of political aims are going directly against certain verses in the Koran. For example there is one verse which simply states, "Let there no compulsion in religion." (Koran 2:256).

There are element in the West that seek to increase misunderstanding with Islam. Fear gives some people more power and great profits. Here in the US for example we have given up our rights to privacy, and now think that its ok for the government to be able to monitor our most private communications. Without Fear this would not have been possible. Hate is the companion to fear. The attack on the Prophets person life, have no bearing on the everyday life of a Muslim. The fact that a person can call out to God in a time of distress, for comfort is important. And I could list a host of things that are important in people's everyday lives, such a love, not whether or not Muhammad sold camels.

Don't allow people to control your emotions. Look at who benefits from certain negative information. I get freedom and peace from looking at the common traits of all people.

[yodajazz]

"Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims'

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b181276c-c5c1-11e2-99d1-00144feab7de.html#axzz2UQQvSWX4


From this weekend's Financial Times....

Maoist rebels kill 28 in attack on Indian political convoy
By James Crabtree in Mumbai




Maoist rebels have staged a daring attack on a convoy in the state of Chhattisgarh, killing 28 people, including two senior politicians from the Congress party.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party leader, travelled to Chhattisgarh after the attack, which as one of the bloodiest in recent times marks an escalation in India’s long-running Maoist insurgency.

“Naturally we are devastated,” Mrs Gandhi said on Sunday. “It is despicable that ordinary people engaged in political activity were attacked.”
Rahul Gandhi, Mrs Gandhi’s son and another prominent Congress party figure, said the incident was “an attack on democracy”.
One of the politicians killed, Mahendra Karma, was a former leader of the Congress opposition in the state, which is governed by the Hindu nationalist BJP party. He had also been the public face of a prominent local counterinsurgency campaign, in which state forces armed militia groups as part of a plan to counter rebel activities.
Nand Kumar Patel, head of the Congress party in the state, was also killed, having initially been abducted along with his son and a number of others caught up in the attack, according to Indian media reports.
Large parts of central India suffer from violence linked to radical leftwing guerrilla groups, known as the Naxalites, which operate in an area spanning several states that is often referred to as the country’s “red corridor”.
The districts most affected by the insurgency are typically poor and rural, with large tribal populations. However, areas such as southern Chhattisgarh also contain some of India’s richest untapped deposits of minerals, including iron ore and coal, creating commercial pressure to end the violence.
Analysts say that in recent years both the rebel groups and the Indian authorities have toughened their approach to the conflict, rejecting moves for peace talks and moving to escalate military activities.
“The government has had the completely wrong approach to this,” said Nandini Sundar, a professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. “Of late, there has been a general hardening of attitudes on both sides and, sadly, what we are now seeing is a move to no-holds barred war on both sides, of which this attack is just an example.”
Some of India’s largest businesses, including the Tata and Essar conglomerates, operate industrial and mining facilities in Chhattisgarh, although ongoing violence has limited their operations.
“There are a lot of companies in the northern half of the state, but in the south they can’t really start mining because of the fighting,” Ms Sunder said. “So there is a lot of pressure from that side on the government to get rid of the Maoists, so it can begin.”

A profound event that shaped my meaning of life is when four girls were killed, in a church bombing in Alabama, by White supremacists. The girls were my age at the time, 12-14. This gives me a different perspective on 'terrorism', also. More recently, the dragging death of a Black man, by Whites is another more recent example of how irrational hate makes people.

[MacShreach]

I don't see it as a diversionary tactic to point out that there have been examples of atrocities committed by Buddhists and Hindus, rather it is denial on your part because of an obsession with Islam as the main perpetrator of such things, even when the agenda is political rather than religious. The Tamil Tigers feature in all serious analysis of 'suicide missions', to discount them is absurd in the context of this debate. Your assertions about Muhammad are biased, there are other accounts which say he consummated his marriage to Ayesha when she was a teenager, but it doesn't fit the stereotype you need. But as you say, unless the debate is serious enough to unravel the myths and identify the core problems, which are political, this debate will just go round in circles.

Precisely. Accommodationists, appeasers and apologists for a vicious, Dark Age, territorially aggressive sect that condones lying, female circumcision, honour killings and the overthrow of European cultural values will never, ever, see that they are doing until it's too late. Just like they did in the 1930s. There are better places to expend effort.

[MacShreach]

Spirituality is at the core of most religions including Islam. Most all people want to find a life of everyday happiness, that would include a family or community, some material comfort, that might come from a job for example. You cannot leave out food, and sex, laughter and other emotional needs. Spirituality, in general provides comfort, in so much as we see our connection to each other, from a common source, which is defined as God, (or Allah for Muslims).

Yes there is a political element in Islam, as the Prophet was also a warrior-general, and administrator. But he also had a long period, at first when he was a mystic who had revelations from an angel. Those Muslims who do resort to violence because of political aims are going directly against certain verses in the Koran. For example there is one verse which simply states, "Let there no compulsion in religion." (Koran 2:256).

There are element in the West that seek to increase misunderstanding with Islam. Fear gives some people more power and great profits. Here in the US for example we have given up our rights to privacy, and now think that its ok for the government to be able to monitor our most private communications. Without Fear this would not have been possible. Hate is the companion to fear. The attack on the Prophets person life, have no bearing on the everyday life of a Muslim. The fact that a person can call out to God in a time of distress, for comfort is important. And I could list a host of things that are important in people's everyday lives, such a love, not whether or not Muhammad sold camels.

Don't allow people to control your emotions. Look at who benefits from certain negative information. I get freedom and peace from looking at the common traits of all people.

Yosi, do you not understand the doctrine of abrogation? Later pronouncements from Uncle Mo take precedence over earlier ones. In general, that means the violent ones. Surah 2:256 was written early, when Mo was attempting to defend himself from attack for his beliefs. It was a different story when the boot was on the other foot, as Surah 9:5 makes very clear: 'after the forbidden months have passed, slay the unbelievers wherever you find them; capture them, torture them, besiege them, prepare every stratagem of warfare against them.'

The Qu'ran and Islam condemns itself. Doesn't need any help at all.

[dc_guy_75]

I will never understand why the West allows immigration from any Muslim country, what benefit can possibly come from importing people who carry backwards cultures?

If they are religious, they should be let to fester in the own Islamic-influenced culture.

[Prospero]

So now Islam = the third reich.

[yosi]

6 days of riots in Sweden . all rioters are muslims ( why am I not surprised? )

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22656657

[yodajazz]

Yosi, do you not understand the doctrine of abrogation? Later pronouncements from Uncle Mo take precedence over earlier ones. In general, that means the violent ones. Surah 2:256 was written early, when Mo was attempting to defend himself from attack for his beliefs. It was a different story when the boot was on the other foot, as Surah 9:5 makes very clear: 'after the forbidden months have passed, slay the unbelievers wherever you find them; capture them, torture them, besiege them, prepare every stratagem of warfare against them.'

The Qu'ran and Islam condemns itself. Doesn't need any help at all.

First of all the Qu'ran itself says there are no abrogations in it. (2:106) reads: “We do not abrogate any verse or cause it to be forgotten but We bring another verse either similar to it or better than that.” Okay, some do believe they exist, as the debate has gone on for 1500 years. Certain not all believe that certain ones are. Thiose that claim they exist, do not all agree one which ones are. But here's what one scholar concludes: "One does not find any direct statement of the Prophet indicating that any verse of the Qur’an as practically invalid." http://iiit.org/Research/ScholarsSummerInstitute/TableofContents/ArgumentsforAbrogationintheQuranACritique/tabid/241/Default.aspx

Even more important is the fact that Christian and Jews are not unbelievers, according to the Koran. They are referred to as the "people of the Book". This concept is mentioned too many times, to be abrogated, if abrogations do exist.

Here's a treatment of 9:5: "The aforementioned verse (9:5) was concerned with the most vehement opponents of the Islamic faith not by virtue of their refusal to be Muslims but by continually breaching their treaties with the Muslims and fighting them." So this is really about a specific instance of those attacking the Muslims. Meanwhile: (8:61), "And if they incline to peace, then incline to it and trust in God; surely He is the Hearing, the Knowing."
http://www.muslimaccess.com/articles/jihad/kill_the_infidels.asp

My concern about your approach is that I see you ready to persecute people not because of their actions, but because of a general belief system, that clearly gives them choices for their actions. Once you do this you open the door for genocide. And what that does is give all Muslims a clear justification for war. You have by some estimates to be 10% of Muslims, who are 'radicals'. Your strategy involves persecuting the other 90%, ignoring the best, and least expensive weapon against terrorism, which is the Qu'ran itself with a 9 to 1 advantage among Muslim to start with. You are in fact helping terrorists in accomplishing their goal to unite all Muslims behind them.

If you know 9:5, (the entire verse, not just what you have quoted), you need to also understand the concept of God as Merciful, that starts off in every chapter except two. That is more important when you seek true understanding. Understanding exposes murderers and others actions for what they really are: It's not about religion, but about people using it for political power.

[Prospero]

Good post Yodajazz.

[Stavros]

Precisely. Accommodationists, appeasers and apologists for a vicious, Dark Age, territorially aggressive sect that condones lying, female circumcision, honour killings and the overthrow of European cultural values will never, ever, see that they are doing until it's too late. Just like they did in the 1930s. There are better places to expend effort.

It has nothing to do with appeasement: if you decide Islam is the enemy, you can then slot in all the evils you dislike to prove it: the truth is irrelevant, just as the denial of the truth was part of appeasement!

Honour killings -Sikhs do it, Hindus do it, non-Muslim Africans do it -I think we can agree that all such killings are wrong, whoever does it.
Female circumcision: practised by Jews, Christians, Muslims, and depending on which text you read banned by all the same religions.
Lying: is there any political group you can think of that doesn't lie?
European cultural values: UKIP and a proportion of the voters who support the Conservative, Liberal-Democrat and Labour parties are opposed to 'European cultural values', indeed, to Europe in general. I went on a course in London some years ago before Christmas, and we agreed to have a celebration lunch at the end, but one guy insisted 'We eat English'- he was terrified of being taken for a curry, a Chinese, or even worse, something French.
Territorially Aggressive Sect: Israel? But then not all Jews are supporters of Israel or its territorial ambitions, so it can't be a 'Jewish problem'...

[yosi]

Here's a treatment of 9:5: "The aforementioned verse (9:5) was concerned with the most vehement opponents of the Islamic faith not by virtue of their refusal to be Muslims but by continually breaching their treaties with the Muslims and fighting them."
.

in other words , the killing of this British soldier is justified because he fought muslims?

[yosi]

Female circumcision: practised by Jews, Christians, Muslims, and depending on which text you read banned by all the same religions.



Female circumcision is NOT practised by Jews or Christians

[Stavros]

(Warning: some graphic photos)

The Terror of the Female Circumcision in Christianity - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fUlsMafFjM)

[Stavros]

Male & Female Circumcision: Among Jews, Christians and Muslims Religious, Medical, Social and Legal Debate (Marco Polo Monographs, 5): Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh: 9771527228000: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519ZHVDXENL.@@AMEPARAM@@519ZHVDXENL (http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0967720168)

[Prospero]

The British tabloid papers today call for those who preach hate to be jailed. Would that extend, I wonder, to those who preach hate against Muslims.

[yosi]

The British tabloid papers today call for those who preach hate to be jailed. Perhaps some form of camp on the Isle of Wight might work. Would that extend, I wonder, to those who preach hate against Muslims.

Prospero

if I don't agree with your OPINIONS , it doesn't mean that I hate you.

I don't hate Muslims , I just say what I see , and I'm not happy with what I see.

there is a HUGE problem that's only getting worse and worse , with the muslim communities in Europe, that needs to be solved in a PEACFUL way , to say that this problem doesn't exist is NOT the way to solve it.

you are NAIVE, Prospero.

[robertlouis]

The British tabloid papers today call for those who preach hate to be jailed. Perhaps some form of camp on the Isle of Wight might work. Would that extend, I wonder, to those who preach hate against Muslims.


Is there a direct equivalent on the right to those on the radical end of Islamism - not Islam, there's a profound difference - who preach hate to the extent of attacking and undermining the state and encouraging terrorism on the streets? I honestly don't know, but if there is, I wonder why we haven't heard about it.

[Prospero]

Robert Louis - thank you for making that distinction between islam and islamism. It is a crucial one. Stavros has actually been doing an excellent job in this thread in pointing up the deeper and more complex issues we should know about.

No. I certainly do accept that among the biggest challenges facing the civilised world - western and in Muslim countries - is the growth of violent islamic radicalism. (Matched perhaps only by issues of Climate Change). It is also a challenge to the followers e of the faith as well - to the millions who do not subscribe to this violent vision - and yet are being seen branded as supporting Radical jihadism and the philosophy al al-Queda.

I've never denied that problem or its difficulty, threat and scale , despite being branded an apologist, having my views associated with George Galloway or being accused of being in the company of appeasers who are supposedly blind to an evil akin to Nazism in its threat to Western civilisation.

I agree, there is no gathering force on the Right akin in scale to that of Radical islam. (Though the radical right in Europe is beginning to stir in deeply unpleasant ways - consider Golden Dawn in Greece for instance or the upsurge of the racist right in Hungary in the shape of Jobbik and of the National Front in France, the growing impact of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands etc)

But there is a nasty and unthinking reaction on the streets by those who know little of the religion and its varieties and beleifs. It is fuelled by certain sections of the media and hijacked by racists such as the BNP and EDL.- the sort of masked thugs who attempt burn down mosques, attack Muslims on the streets and who say that the entire religion is at blame for the behaviour of an abberent minority (albeit a large, extremely dangerous and and hateful one).

The attention given to the hideous and wholly unnaceptable murder of this young man this past week has been immense and, in some places, emotionally manipulative and rabble rousing. (Where for instance was even a comparable smidgeon of attention given to the racist murder of a Muslim grandfather in his seventies - see my posting a couple of days back - on his way home from Friday prayers in Birmingham earlier this month.).

The killing of the soldier has provoked a hysterical outcry and outpouring of hatred against a whole people. Race hate monitoring groups report hundreds of hate incidents in the days since that murder.

Yosi... I am not naive. I accept there are very big problems indeed. I have never denied that. it does indeed need to be addressed peacefully - not by the sort of hateful backlash we are presently seeing.

I write here calling for moderation and understanding and a mutual exploration of the problems. The crass vilification of an entire religion on the basis of a poisoned interpretation of the faith is, to my mind, wholly unnacceptable.

I also believe that if we are to move forward, examining the roots of this behaviour and the growing of these radical ideas should NOT be buried in all the hysteria about the crime committed last week. Intelligent discussion, not bigoted and emotional prejudice. No aspect should be taboo - Islam's disgraceful attitude to women and the West's often disgraceful behaviour in foreign policy Muslim majority countries. All these are part of the picture.

[yodajazz]

in other words , the killing of this British soldier is justified because he fought muslims?

Murder is murder. Murder is a crime. People are responsible for their actions. But if it were an actual battlefield that would be different. Today's world is not as clear. The US feels it has a right to kill certain Muslims without due process, to the public. That is only valid in war, as a general proposition. I am not knowledgeable as to what England is doing at this time. But it does not appear that the soldier was in a combat zone.

Certainly suicide bombing of civilians is not justified in the Koran. Right after 9/11 100,000 people got together in Tehran, and held a candlelight vigil in support of the US. Yet US television repeatedly showed a video containing 5 or 6 Muslim looking people celebrating.

[fred41]

My heart goes out to Mr.Rigby's family. What an awful thing to happen to a family. At the same time I have big time admiration for those three women who risked their lives in the face of these demented assholes. Women in the U.K. must come from some very tough stock. Respect.

OftenI get the feeling butchers like these vermin and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (the most recent examples)are not created. I think they are born thugs who will hook up to any cause that exists to give cover to their personal blood lust. If there were no religious or political causes in place to give them cover - they would create one. They want the world to notice them for acts of brutality because they don't have the skill set and work ethic to make it happen any other way. That and they simply enjoy violence...only violence will quench the constant, irrational hatred in their gut - but only temporarily.

[Stavros]

I agree with you Fred, as plenty of people convert to Islam and don't even think about causing harm to anyone. On another level, one could argue that young men aged between 18-30 are the most dangerous force on the planet, and often encouraged by older men: the assassins of Tsar Alexander in 1881, the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X all four within five years of each other; not to mention the Brown Shirts and the Black Shirts, Falangist Espanol and Falangist Libanais; Palestinian guerillas, Tamil Tigers, ETA, IRA, and so on. If there is a crisis of masculinity, it's been going on a long time.

[yosi]

just a reminder


***MUST SEE Muslims "Palestinians" Celebrating 9/11 (CNN - Fox) September 11 ARABS twin towers 911 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRA0NKQ0k6E)


American Muslims celebrating 9/11 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5BtQgTGOI4)




A religion of peace.........

[TSBootyLondon]

As long as there is religion and oil on this planet there will always be war!

It is pure madness regardless of the underlining issues that provoked this latest attack! My heart goes out to the families of all victims of war world wide.

Is there a solution!??? We can't ban islam, Catholicism or even Judaism!

Anyone who believes that the after life will open their gates in rejoice for you if you commit such an act needs putting down in my view!
These Islamic splinter groups are absolute fruit loops!...
raised a catholic, I walked away from religion as a teenager and largely because I believed it was all fictional nonsense. To date I have not received my calling back to god! and should I hear it in the not to distant future my faith will consist only of peace and love!

x Bella

[joeninety]

Man is a savage beast at his core no matter how much we pretend we are civilised.

Sad but true we destroy the planet, the other species, as well as each other all in the name of whatever agenda suits.

Man is flawed in his nature and will always find a reason to fight over something, no matter what and therein lies the problem.

Fact is 1000s of years of supposed civilisation, wars and killings, still nothing learnt and still no peace kind of proves the point.:(

[marbellamei]

i think its time people started to realise that sky fairies do not exists. in some cases a killing can be justified as for the sake of a grater good but never in the name of religion. having said that, the backlash the whole episode has created has gone too far. why cant people just live and let live? it seems like there is always a bigger prick out there

[hippifried]

All this goes away when/if we ever climb out of this primitive fire culture we've been in since the dawn of history.

[yodajazz]

As long as there is religion and oil on this planet there will always be war!

It is pure madness regardless of the underlining issues that provoked this latest attack! My heart goes out to the families of all victims of war world wide.

Is there a solution!??? We can't ban islam, Catholicism or even Judaism!

Anyone who believes that the after life will open their gates in rejoice for you if you commit such an act needs putting down in my view!
These Islamic splinter groups are absolute fruit loops!...
raised a catholic, I walked away from religion as a teenager and largely because I believed it was all fictional nonsense. To date I have not received my calling back to god! and should I hear it in the not to distant future my faith will consist only of peace and love!

x Bella

It's not about religion. In my opinion its about control of the land power and money. The US invaded Iraq, first talking about weapons of mass destruction, but also claiming humanitarian goals. A few years earlier there was a great ethnic slaughter in Rwanda. There were no major nations interested in going in there. The difference I see, was that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves. We knew in advance of the fragile structure of ethnic peace there, before we invaded. The think tank that called for the invasion of Irag in 1998, (PNAC), said the ethnic strife, could be used to our advantage, as we could broker for resources, separately between groups. The Israeli-Arab conflict is more about land than anything else.

Israel is not buying land, from Arabs or even appropriating lan,d but including the dwellers, into the Israeli nation with full rights. They are just taking land. Israel knows that some of the people they have displaced have live there close to 2000 years, yet they feel they have the right to take what ever they want. Yes religion is used as an excuse, to justify their reason, but there is always some excuse to take land. Remember Hitler claimed that ethnic Germans were being mistreated as his excuse for invading Czechoslovakia. We here in the West don't getting any sense of human feeling for the people that are displaced in Palestine. I sometimes seek out 'alternative' media. Here's one story from long ago, I remember:

Imagine being 10 years old, on the way to school with your best bud. In this case you happen to be Palestinian. All of a sudden there are explosions,and you friend is hit and dies before your eyes. Turns out Israel did it in the process of killing two Hamas leaders in a targeted assassination. In the US media it says about the two Hamas leaders, and also mentions that 4 others were killed and 10 others injured. Yes they got them, but what did they create? It's been long enough that that young survivor should be in his twenties. Not only affecting him, but the story is broadcast in the Arab world. Is this really about religion? No its about how we treat people from other ethnic groups. Was the Rwanda tragedy created by religion?

We have tunnel vision because lots of media hide the bigger story. The 3,500 Americans, who died in Iraq is mentioned much more than the 100,000 plus Iraqis. I am not trying to justify, or minimize the tragedy of the murdered English soldier. His murder is very wrong, in my eyes given the specific circumstances. So LL, you are right, in pointing out the road to the solution. That is to understand that all human life has value. We should want for all, the rights which we have for ourselves. And if you have peace and love, and are able to give it to others, you have the same thing that formal religions have to offer.

[Stavros]

just a reminder
A religion of peace.........

Sorry Yosi, you fail to establish that Islam is responsible for 9/11, which was a political act. In fact both bin Laden and al-Zawahri had to abandon basic tenets of Islam in order to justify these attacks, just as the gruesome event that happened in London last week is not justified by Islam. You and I share the same revulsion, the same anger, the same hope that these events will stop. But where you blame religion, I ask you to look at the politics. For reasons wholly in tune with capitalism and Empire the British became directly involved in the Middle East -Britain and France created the states you see, their officials were literally on the ground in some places drawing the lines on the map, in other cases looking at inaccurate maps and drawing red lines with a crayon and saying: Iraq on this side, (Trans)Jordan on the other. If you read today's obituaries in The Daily Telegraph (29 May 2013) you will find one for the man who drew the Green Line in Cyprus that still, today, separates Turks and Greeks on the island no-one cares about. I would rather we agreed on the causes of this violence and find a way to stop it, than make empty accusations about religion that do you no favours.
This paper from 2003 might help: it explores the gap between Islam and the politics of al-Qaeda.
http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Security/azzaml.pdf

[Prospero]

Yosi. I echo all the hopes here that these grotesque and monstrous crimes will cease.

If you can bear it there is also an excellent and very readable book giving an account of the formation and growth of al-Qaeda called "The Looming Tower" by the New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright which looks at how key figures like Sayyid Qutb helped shape the ideology of these primarily political terrorists. It covers the years leading up to 9/11.

[TSBootyLondon]

I rest my case.... refer to my original message.... re religion AND oil!

Greed, power, my god is greater than your god and so on!

Unimaginable crimes are committed around the world every single day! someone, somewhere is brutally murdered for some cause or another and its all BS!
Its not until someone is brutally maimed on a normal street, on a normal day, in front of lots of 'normal' witnesses that we stand up and say hang on a minute I don't agree with this!!!
I believe that we all have a right to believe in what we want to believe in, I just don't think that anyone has a right to choke another person to death on their views if they are different!
I am by no means a racist however I have to say that sometimes I think we need to take a leaf out of the Australians rule book...
It goes a little like if you don't like the way us Australians live our lives you are free to leave at any given time! I get a little sad at times when I look at the state of 'Great' Britain... can't help but feel the 'Great' is now nothing but a cheap word!

Did anyone see the YouTube clip earlier this week of a girl in Luton who attended a 'peace' march??? (Shall I find it??)

Peace and love as always xx Bella


UPDAE:.... Here is the clip anyway.

Luton 2012 A girl comes home and is disgusted by an Islam protest. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYshz2knHa0)


It's not about religion. In my opinion its about control of the land power and money. The US invaded Iraq, first talking about weapons of mass destruction, but also claiming humanitarian goals. A few years earlier there was a great ethnic slaughter in Rwanda. There were no major nations interested in going in there. The difference I see, was that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves. We knew in advance of the fragile structure of ethnic peace there, before we invaded. The think tank that called for the invasion of Irag in 1998, (PNAC), said the ethnic strife, could be used to our advantage, as we could broker for resources, separately between groups. The Israeli-Arab conflict is more about land than anything else.

Israel is not buying land, from Arabs or even appropriating lan,d but including the dwellers, into the Israeli nation with full rights. They are just taking land. Israel knows that some of the people they have displaced have live there close to 2000 years, yet they feel they have the right to take what ever they want. Yes religion is used as an excuse, to justify their reason, but there is always some excuse to take land. Remember Hitler claimed that ethnic Germans were being mistreated as his excuse for invading Czechoslovakia. We here in the West don't getting any sense of human feeling for the people that are displaced in Palestine. I sometimes seek out 'alternative' media. Here's one story from long ago, I remember:

Imagine being 10 years old, on the way to school with your best bud. In this case you happen to be Palestinian. All of a sudden there are explosions,and you friend is hit and dies before your eyes. Turns out Israel did it in the process of killing two Hamas leaders in a targeted assassination. In the US media it says about the two Hamas leaders, and also mentions that 4 others were killed and 10 others injured. Yes they got them, but what did they create? It's been long enough that that young survivor should be in his twenties. Not only affecting him, but the story is broadcast in the Arab world. Is this really about religion? No its about how we treat people from other ethnic groups. Was the Rwanda tragedy created by religion?

We have tunnel vision because lots of media hide the bigger story. The 3,500 Americans, who died in Iraq is mentioned much more than the 100,000 plus Iraqis. I am not trying to justify, or minimize the tragedy of the murdered English soldier. His murder is very wrong, in my eyes given the specific circumstances. So LL, you are right, in pointing out the road to the solution. That is to understand that all human life has value. We should want for all, the rights which we have for ourselves. And if you have peace and love, and are able to give it to others, you have the same thing that formal religions have to offer.

[yosi]

It's not about religion.


It's ALL about religion.

see what happens these days in Syria , Shiit muslims of Hizbollah in the name of Shiit muslims of Iran are helping Assad who is killing thousands of his poeple, Suni muslims are bombing shiit sections of Beirut in response for this help , Suni muslim countries are supporting the rebels against Assad who is supported by the shiit muslims ..........

this is just the tip of the iceberg , everything is about religion , politics is just the excuse.

[yosi]

"in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas movement condemned the killing, praising bin Laden as “an Arab and Muslim warrior.”


http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-05-02/world/35232573_1_osama-bin-arab-order-death

[joeninety]

It's ALL about religion.

see what happens these days in Syria , Shiit muslims of Hizbollah in the name of Shiit muslims of Iran are helping Assad who is killing thousands of his poeple, Suni muslims are bombing shiit sections of Beirut in response for this help , Suni muslim countries are supporting the rebels against Assad who is supported by the shiit muslims ..........

this is just the tip of the iceberg , everything is about religion , politics is just the excuse.

Cripes you are brainwashed:confused:

Syria was fine until Western meddling, same with Libya, same with Iraq, the western/middle eastern elitists want to asset strip said countries and play monopoly, so they played on shia sunni divisions, then create wonderful stories of spreading democracy and liberation, sheep people fall for stories uprising begin and off we go.

Propaganda 101......At its core it is not about religion its about asset stripping and monopoly by way of exploiting tribal, regional, and religious differences.

Muslim, Jew and Christian elite sit down together and play us for fools, if its about religion then tell me why do the 3 sit together???

Think you want to be more concerned about who the next poor might be:ignore:

[Prospero]

The video clip posted by London ladyboys is off the absurd followers of Al Mairjaroun (now banned) who are NOT representative of Islam's mainstream at all. A radical fringe group from whose ranks it does seem clear the present murderers stepped. And the so-called cleric the young woman meets with in the latter part of the video is Anjem Choudhary, former market trader and night club bouncer who converted to islam some years ago, trained as a lawyer and now proclaims himself a cleric (which he is not) and is the leader now of a radical group who facilitate the recruitment of young impressionable Muslim men (like the accused from Woolwich). His grou regularly hold meetings t which young men are addressed by live video link from the Middle east by a key banned radical Imam.

If anyone is "going to hell" it is Choudhary and is cult.

[TSBootyLondon]

Its so confusing ... so many splinter groups (Its easier for me if I just call them that lol), so many adaptations... so much confusion even by my eyes is it no wonder their all going potty out there!

I read about the protest after I saw the YouTube clip I posted... what I found most offensive about the footage was the way that she was attacked for her clothing. I personally think that she looks beautiful, she, in my opinion chose her outfit in the hope of fitting in so used consideration!

That to me was living proof that their are people here in the UK who are not respectful of our way of life or culture and given the opportunity they would change as much as they physically could rather than embrace the country that open their doors and gave them a home!

If that was me in that footage and I was spoken to like that about my clothing I would have taken one for the team and taken the dress off all together just to prove that I to have a freedom of expression and granted some what ignorant too lol!
I have myself been a victim of abuse by a muslim woman who told me to show some respect for myself, it was hot, last summer in Kensington and I was wearing shorts and a light white cotton vest, bare legs and flip flops!

Everything has gone mad!
People are frightened to speak out in fear of being called racist, poor muslim communities are under threat due to the ignorance of so many who don't understand what it is all about!

I just want peace and love,
I didn't invade anywhere! I just love my Great Britain and want to be left in harmony! and in doing so I will wear what I please (Typical woman, people dying and I am protesting for my short skirts and thongs lol)!
xx




The video clip posted by London ladyboys is off the absurd followers of Al Mairjaroun (now banned) who are NOT representative of Islam's mainstream at all. A radical fringe group from whose ranks it does seem clear the present murderers stepped. And the so-called cleric the young woman meets with in the latter part of the video is Anjem Choudhary, former market trader and night club bouncer who converted to islam some years ago, trained as a lawyer and now proclaims himself a cleric (which he is not) and is the leader now of a radical group who facilitate the recruitment of young impressionable Muslim men (like the accused from Woolwich). His grou regularly hold meetings t which young men are addressed by live video link from the Middle east by a key banned radical Imam.

If anyone is "going to hell" it is Choudhary and is cult.

[Prospero]

The whole thorny issue of what women can wear and show and not show is complex - and difffers from culture to culture (and within the Islamic world from nation to nation) . A friend in India recently was told that while a bare midriff is acceptable to devout Hindus showing bare legs is mot. She adopted a long shalwa kameez for her trip.

if a woman goes one of the Jewish ultra orthodox sections of Jerusalem - Mea shearim for instance - you will get abused and possibly physically attacked if you wear clothes they consider disrespectful (bare arms for instance, your hair uncovered, short skirts). Ultra orthodox Jewish women tend to shave or cut short their hair when married and wear wigs.

in Tunisia before the arab spring and in other north african Muslim majority countries Muslim girls swimming ear light gauzy leggings with their swimsuits so as to play lip service to being observant.

In Dubai I talked to many women who wear the rather elegant loose sitting headscarf known as an abaya. But one said when she visits her cousin in Saudi Arabia she has had to start adopting the full veil - the Niqab - because otherwise men hassle her on the street. And western women working there have to cover themselves in public.

I remember as a child - a Roman Catholic back then - when going to church women were expected to cover their hair during mass. Men conversely had to remove their hats.
When visiting the vatican - St peters - tourists still are given long coveralls - if they arrive in shorts. The same as in many Mosques.

Before the Taliban regime took power in Afghanistan most women had started to wear modern clothes, Archive footage from the sixties show women on the streets of kabul in mini skirts and other western fashions. This was true in Cairo in Egypt also until the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In many Arab countries parents who are devout - or further along the sectrum to crazy - have taken to making their little daughters wear a veil. The Quran does not require this until adolescence.

And so on. All so hidebound.

The women in that clip, many I suspect converts, have adapted the full Niqab for religious/cultural reasons. To my mind they've a right to dress like that if it suits them (its a ludicrous medieval version of islam) but really do need to accept the right of other cultures to wear whatever clothes they choose.

[TSBootyLondon]

What I didn't say previously....

I enjoy traveling and embracing different cultures. I am always respectful of and aware of how I should dress regardless of being in Rome, India, Dhabi or Thailand for that matter.
The need often arises where I go to church (A wedding/funeral/ christening/exorcism or other occasions) I am always aware of what I wear. It is respectful isn't it? I equally do not have an issue with muslim women's clothing, if thats what they want to wear then so be it!!
What I have have an issue with is hypocrisy!
I can't wear a crash helmet into a bank but she can wear her head wear where only her eyes are visible! and then there is passport control!

I have seen a muslim woman breeze through passport control at Heathrow without even so much as a little fiddle with her head wear! What is that about!?




The whole thorny issue of what women can wear and show and not show is complex - and difffers from culture to culture (and within the Islamic world from nation to nation) . A friend in India recently was told that while a bare midriff is acceptable to devout Hindus showing bare legs is mot. She adopted a long shalwa kameez for her trip.

if a woman goes one of the Jewish ultra orthodox sections of Jerusalem - Mea shearim for instance - you will get abused and possibly physically attacked if you wear clothes they consider disrespectful (bare arms for instance, your hair uncovered, short skirts). Ultra orthodox Jewish women tend to shave or cut short their hair when married and wear wigs.

in Tunisia before the arab spring and in other north african Muslim majority countries Muslim girls swimming ear light gauzy leggings with their swimsuits so as to play lip service to being observant.

In Dubai I talked to many women who wear the rather elegant loose sitting headscarf known as an abaya. But one said when she visits her cousin in Saudi Arabia she has had to start adopting the full veil - the Niqab - because otherwise men hassle her on the street. And western women working there have to cover themselves in public.

I remember as a child - a Roman Catholic back then - when going to church women were expected to cover their hair during mass. Men conversely had to remove their hats.
When visiting the vatican - St peters - tourists still are given long coveralls - if they arrive in shorts. The same as in many Mosques.

Before the Taliban regime took power in Afghanistan most women had started to wear modern clothes, Archive footage from the sixties show women on the streets of kabul in mini skirts and other western fashions. This was true in Cairo in Egypt also until the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In many Arab countries parents who are devout - or further along the sectrum to crazy - have taken to making their little daughters wear a veil. The Quran does not require this until adolescence.

And so on. All so hidebound.

The women in that clip, many I suspect converts, have adapted the full Niqab for religious/cultural reasons. To my mind they've a right to dress like that if it suits them (its a ludicrous medieval version of islam) but really do need to accept the right of other cultures to wear whatever clothes they choose.

[Prospero]

I have seen a muslim woman breeze through passport control at Heathrow without even so much as a little fiddle with her head wear! What is that about!?


That is surely about a muddled and idiotic official response, post 9/11, which allows such lapses of security but which targets little old ladies in some absurd attempt to appear politically correct.

[TSBootyLondon]

This was late last year. I was coming back from Dublin, she was in the same isle as me so she must have had a British passport? It happened!
I was left feeling seriously angry! Total numpty clearly working behind the desk!



That is surely about a muddled and idiotic official response, post 9/11, which allows such lapses of security but which targets little old ladies in some absurd attempt to appear politically correct.

[jake9jake9]

I have seen a muslim woman breeze through passport control at Heathrow without even so much as a little fiddle with her head wear! What is that about!?

I think you're basing this on a tiny amount of experience. As far as I'm aware, Muslim women do get properly checked (by another woman of course), but it's usually done behind screens, and not in the general public as it is for others.


I can't wear a crash helmet into a bank but she can wear her head wear where only her eyes are visible! and then there is passport control!

Imo, that's not really a fair analogy. Firstly, the covering which only shows her eyes is called a "Niqaab". Secondly, she wears it because it's something she believes her religion sanctions. This is a lot different to someone randomly wearing a crash helmet into a bank, for no good reason whatsoever - quite suspicious too.

Not to mention, if authorities wanted to check what's behind the veil, then they have full permission to do this.

[jake9jake9]

Before the Taliban regime took power in Afghanistan most women had started to wear modern clothes, Archive footage from the sixties show women on the streets of kabul in mini skirts and other western fashions. This was true in Cairo in Egypt also until the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I think this is quite a generalization. One small clip or a few pictures does not indicate that "most women had started to wear modern clothes".

One of the reasons the religious party in Iran got power in 1979, was because the secular party before that, which tried to "enforce western clothing", including the banning of the hijab - was something that the people, especially the women, were completely against. For most women, it meant a change in how they were required to dress, and this lead to one of the causes of the revolutionary uprising, which very much had religious significance from the general public.

It's no different with Afghanistan, sure, there were less restrictions on how people dressed, however, it did not mean most women began to observe western clothing, contrary to that, most continued to wear the hijab and dress based on Afghan culture.

[TSBootyLondon]

Hold fire me hearty!!! I based the first post on my actual experience, only one granted but it was something that I witnessed personally, secondly I am fully aware of why she wears the attire however my point that I am clearly struggling to put across is (take the video I posted as an example here) A muslim woman openly abuses an English woman for her lack of clothing as she finds it offensive!
I used the crash helmet in the bank as an example as it was the first thing that popped into my head... and yes suspicious BUT the same is expected in many Petrol stations also, again I write with experience... I have walked into service stations before and been asked to remove my lid... 9 times out of 10 the cashier is shocked to find a female face behind the visor!

At no point did I ever say that I have an issue with women wearing the "Niqaab"... My issue is when 'their' views are forced upon other people!

I have a very good friend who is partnered to a muslim man and has his children, she is a white catholic and has not and does not plan on converting to Islam however for the sake of piece in her relationship she wears the "Niqaab" so I am not completely ignorant to the culture, he however (And yes he is a minority) is very openly ignorant to other peoples though!

I don't believe in god, I follow no religion and my only dream for this world is peace and love!!
If there is an after life then I will deal with my demons then, not now!

xxx



I think you're basing this on a tiny amount of experience. As far as I'm aware, Muslim women do get properly checked (by another woman of course), but it's usually done behind screens, and not in the general public as it is for others.

Imo, that's not really a fair analogy. Firstly, the covering which only shows her eyes is called a "Niqaab". Secondly, she wears it because it's something she believes her religion sanctions. This is a lot different to someone randomly wearing a crash helmet into a bank, for no good reason whatsoever - quite suspicious too.

Not to mention, if authorities wanted to check what's behind the veil, then they have full permission to do this.

[yosi]

differences.

Muslim, Jew and Christian elite sit down together and play us for fools, if its about religion then tell me why do the 3 sit together???

Think you want to be more concerned about who the next poor might be:ignore:


Muslim, Jew and Christian elite sit down together and play us for fools?

do you have any source\link to prove it? or is it your imagination?

[joeninety]

Muslim, Jew and Christian elite sit down together and play us for fools?

do you have any source\link to prove it? or is it your imagination?

I can see your knowledge is very limited will source you some links in a bit

[joeninety]

Muslim, Jew and Christian elite sit down together and play us for fools?

do you have any source\link to prove it? or is it your imagination?


Here are a couple of dots for you

http://www.businessinsider.com/israeli-attack-on-syria-kill-russians-2013-5

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/middleeast/in-shift-saudis-are-said-to-arm-rebels-in-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Christian, Jew, Muslim alliance shared agenda, how is it about religion if the 3 are getting along fine?

The above are playing monopoly, their are plenty more dots go do some research!

[joeninety]

Here are some more dots I imagined for you

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/middleeast/in-shift-saudis-are-said-to-arm-rebels-in-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8182847/Wikileaks-Saudis-chief-funders-of-al-Qaeda.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

http://www.hermes-press.com/BushSaud.htm

http://archive.truthout.org/article/ties-between-bush-family-and-osama-bin-laden

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/roots_of_US-Israel.html

[hippifried]

Dots shmots. Everything's a conspiracy. Didn't you get the memo?

[joeninety]

Dots shmots. Everything's a conspiracy. Didn't you get the memo?

Na I must of been out of the office when it was sent.......Cheers for letting me in on the secret though lol.

[yodajazz]

The video clip posted by London ladyboys is off the absurd followers of Al Mairjaroun (now banned) who are NOT representative of Islam's mainstream at all. A radical fringe group from whose ranks it does seem clear the present murderers stepped. And the so-called cleric the young woman meets with in the latter part of the video is Anjem Choudhary, former market trader and night club bouncer who converted to islam some years ago, trained as a lawyer and now proclaims himself a cleric (which he is not) and is the leader now of a radical group who facilitate the recruitment of young impressionable Muslim men (like the accused from Woolwich). His grou regularly hold meetings t which young men are addressed by live video link from the Middle east by a key banned radical Imam.

If anyone is "going to hell" it is Choudhary and is cult.

I hadn't heard of him, as I am from the US. However this is a typical example of using hate to control people. If you can get people to hate, they are mostly in your control. So who is available to hate? Young men, who aren't getting any, apparently. Here is the US, some White men are recruited by hating Blacks. some of them even use some form of pseudo-Christianity to justify their hate. Religion is a tool for many things.

I was listening to Public Radio today and heard a show about Syria. One woman what had recently returned from there, talked to Shia, and Sunnis. Some were calling the other side "non'believers". And at the same time there are other communities where they live side by side in peace. This blows my mind, as they both worship from the same Koran. It still goes back to political power, as people are controlled by seeing another group as negative. Once their humanity is taken away, any thing is possible including murder. This is why it is important for us to not take away Muslim's humanity. In the lead to the Iraq invasion, the Bush Administration, more or less implied that Hussein, had something to do with 9/11, so that at one time a majority of people thought he had some connection. So more people supported the invasion than might normally do so, given the facts. Control through fear and hate.

[joeninety]

A lovely quote

"People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures,
allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their
enemies".


People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams,
(reality Tv stardom and Talent shows, some of the means that cater)

justify their failures,
(Therapy industries caters to this nicely as does advertising)

allay their fears,
(Don't worry we know who the enemy is, we are going to bomb the shite out of them you will see, kabooomm there told you)

confirm their suspicions
(See we told you he had weapons of ass destruction???)


and help them throw rocks at their enemies.
(Its the reds, nope its the blues, oh now its the desert dwellers, don't worry people we are on it to bomb it, any survivors are getting Gbayed)

Brainwashing of the masses and the flock falls for it everytime:confused:

[Prospero]

Jake9Jake9

You righ to pull me up on my remark about MOST women in Afghanistan wearing western clothes. Nonsense of course. What I should have said was a considerable number of women in Kabul (certainly not cities like Kandahar) adopted fashionable western clothes. By the way my source was not one clip - but several Russian documentary films i saw some 12 years ago. On my one and only trip to Afghanistan three years back I scarcely saw women on the street at all and the only ones i did were back to medieval garb.

[yodajazz]

http://news.yahoo.com/radical-monks-prejudice-fuel-myanmar-violence-152625858.html

Buddhists in Myanmar targeting the Muslim minority. Burning businesses and damaging a Mosque. This is the first time I've seen the phrase "Buddhist thugs".

[Stavros]

http://news.yahoo.com/radical-monks-prejudice-fuel-myanmar-violence-152625858.html

Buddhists in Myanmar targeting the Muslim minority. Burning businesses and damaging a Mosque. This is the first time I've seen the phrase "Buddhist thugs".

Add Sri Lanka to the list, courtesy of the Buddhist BBS: (full article in link)

Four years after the killing of between eight and ten thousand Tamils by the Sri Lankan army, which brought to an end a civil war that had lasted for 26 years, there is trouble on the island again. This time the army isn’t directly responsible: instead it’s the Buddhist monks from Bodu Bala Sena, the most active of the fundamentalist groups that have sprouted in Sinhalese strongholds. Three-quarters of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese; most of them are Buddhists. The monks’ target this time is the small Muslim minority. Muslim abattoirs have been raided, halal butchers attacked, homes targeted. The police merely stand and watch, and Sri Lankan TV crews calmly film the violence. A few weeks ago, Buddhist monks got some hoodlums to attack a Muslim-owned car showroom. One of its employees was going out with a young Sinhalese woman and her father complained to a local monk. The Sunday Leader reported that ‘an eyewitness saw a monk leaving one of the temples … followed by a group of youths, mostly under 25 years of age. The group carried stones and, people were later to discover, kerosene.’

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n08/tariq-ali/short-cuts

[hippifried]

Dated but still poignant...

Tom Lehrer - National Brotherhood Week - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY)

[Prospero]

Interesting post Stavros on Sri Lanka. Thanks for that.

I wonder when a group behind an attack are terrorists, when they are guerrillas, when they are liberation fighters, when they are resistance fighters etc etc. It all depends on the perspective i guess. The maoists who killed a bus load of people in India last week were described as guerrillas, not terrorists. The people killed yesterday in Syria by the army were branded terrorists by the Assad government (regime if you are a critic) but as part of the opposition or resistance variously. But if they are al-queda linked then, even those opposed to Assad will brand the as terrorists.The Mujaheddin in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation were freedom fighters. Now the Taliban are terrorists. So what of Hamas, now deprived of Iranian funding as they offer their support to the Syrian uprising? Or Lebanon's Hizbollah who are supporting the Syrian Government.

[Dino Velvet]

So what of Hamas, now deprived of Iranian funding as they offer their support to the Syrian uprising?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/10091629/Iran-cuts-Hamas-funding-over-Syria.html

Just read this article. Guess it's understandable considering the religious difference. Do you think post-Syria conflict(whenever that ends) they(Iran/Hamas) would mend fences and have the money flowing again? Wouldn't it be worth the reinvestment to keep Israel at bay and distracted? Could another country or organization fill the void? Muslim Brotherhood have any cash?

[hippifried]

Interesting post Stavros on Sri Lanka. Thanks for that.

I wonder when a group behind an attack are terrorists, when they are guerrillas, when they are liberation fighters, when they are resistance fighters etc etc. It all depends on the perspective i guess. The maoists who killed a bus load of people in India last week were described as guerrillas, not terrorists. The people killed yesterday in Syria by the army were branded terrorists by the Assad government (regime if you are a critic) but as part of the opposition or resistance variously. But if they are al-queda linked then, even those opposed to Assad will brand the as terrorists.The Mujaheddin in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation were freedom fighters. Now the Taliban are terrorists. So what of Hamas, now deprived of Iranian funding as they offer their support to the Syrian uprising? Or Lebanon's Hizbollah who are supporting the Syrian Government.

It all depends on who's telling the story. Those terms mean nothing.
For years, terrorism, as opposed to military action, was defined by the delivery system of the bomb & the identity of the targets. That doesn't work anymore. We attempted the Guantanamo definition of "lawful" & "unlawful" enemy combatants, but nobody bought it. Can't go strictly by religion or sect. Way too "Klannish" & we wouldn't want to admit to that shit. Nope. Most folks can tell when somebody in media is pushing an agenda. When some butthole with a podium starts spouting off this terminology to justify their support of one gang over another, I usually turn the page or change the channel because they either don't know what they're talking about or they're just lying.

[Stavros]

Interesting post Stavros on Sri Lanka. Thanks for that.

I wonder when a group behind an attack are terrorists, when they are guerrillas, when they are liberation fighters, when they are resistance fighters etc etc. It all depends on the perspective i guess. The maoists who killed a bus load of people in India last week were described as guerrillas, not terrorists. The people killed yesterday in Syria by the army were branded terrorists by the Assad government (regime if you are a critic) but as part of the opposition or resistance variously. But if they are al-queda linked then, even those opposed to Assad will brand the as terrorists.The Mujaheddin in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation were freedom fighters. Now the Taliban are terrorists. So what of Hamas, now deprived of Iranian funding as they offer their support to the Syrian uprising? Or Lebanon's Hizbollah who are supporting the Syrian Government.

It is embedded in the language of politics, and international relations as an academic discipline has not really been able to solve the question, other than to come up with the term 'non-state actors' which distinguishes them from States; although the term also refers to multi-national corporations and, for example, the International Chess Federation.
The various permutations of the IRA consider themselves a military organization with volunteer soldiers; some if not all of the Jewish groups that fought the British in Palestine considered themselves freedom fighters so for Netanyahu and others what to the British were terrorist gangs were part of a National Liberation Movement. Osama bin Laden issued a declaration of war against the USA in 1998, which in an academic sense is not much different from me issuing a declaration of war against Sealand -except that bin Laden followed through on the threat, lethally, and several times. This means that al-Qaeda is a non-state actor whose operatives cannot be classed in international law as combatants, but could be classed as criminals -the point being that the British tried the IRA as criminals because conceptually and politically, it rejected their claims to political legitimacy -the 1921 Treaty and all that. The USA, by first interning people without trial, and in addition depriving them of their rights under the Geneva Conventions and extracting information under torture, then had to conjure up a theory and practice to make it appear they are being subjected to the law, when in reality they could have read them their Miranda rights and tried them in the states affected by their crimes. So, ultimately, I guess it depends on how you legalise political violence, or not.

[MacShreach]

<snip>
There are presently debates underway about limiting the capacity of the press for abuses (inspired by phonetapping scandals) but not really to limit their freedom of expression - including the poison of some columnists. And the two rejudices whch seems to be tacitly allowed these days are homaphobia and Islamaphobia. Anti semitism and prejudice against black people are, in public discourse at least, largely things of the past if not in public behaviour.


Leveson has quietly gone away and that debate is apparently now over. FWIW, it never had a chance.

Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are completely different things and should not be confused. 'Islamophobia' means 'fear of Islam' and not 'fear of people who are Islamic'. Being afraid of a cult with the core beliefs of Islam is a perfectly reasonable point of view; hating people who have renounced the Islamic principles of armed jihad and dhimmitude, even if they cling to other elements of that particular delusion, is not reasonable.

This is completely different from anti-Semitism, which is all about hating a group of people, the Jews, simply because they are Jews. (There are other Semitic peoples but this does not alter the principle.) There is absolutely no element of imperialism or expansionism in Judaism, nor does it discriminate against non-Jews.

In this sense, 'Islamophobia' is a reaction to a specific religious and political agenda, whereas 'anti-Semitism' is just plain old racism.

[Prospero]

Mac...Ive moved this from the thread you posted it in - because it seems to be the wrong place for it there. In my view You have a jaundiced and innaccurate view of islam.

There may not be a word that quite sums up hatred of muslims but it is real as evidenced by the behaviour of the EDL this past week..

[Prospero]

Your consistent misrepresentation of Islam is, in my view, hate speech Mac...for in a wider forum it would inspire the sort of behaviour we've seen in the past few days - Attacks on ordinary decent men and women, the fire bombing of mosques and the neo-Nazi behaviour of the EDL.

What is your response to this behaviour? "Perfectly reasonable?"

[Stavros]

There is absolutely no element of imperialism or expansionism in Judaism, nor does it discriminate against non-Jews.


The problem with this statement is that advocates of political Zionism or Jewish nationalism (not the same thing) have justified their expansionist policies precisely on the Covenant that God made with Abraham; this doesn't mean that every Jew thinks it was a good idea to create Israel, or once having done so, invade other people's land, steal it, force the inhabitants out of their homes at the point of a gun (or kill them where they stood) and, as happened this week, segregate public facilities into Jewish and non-Jewish: just as you cannot blame Islam for the selective political agenda of a minority of its believers, you cannot blame Judaism for the violence inflicted by settlers from the Occupied Territories on Christians and Muslims in both the Occupied Territories and Israel. Even Netanyahu is disgusted by their behaviour, and this is a man who has dedicated his political life to ignoring/smashing the Oslo Accords.

http://www.jta.org/2013/06/02/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/netanyahu-condemns-racism-against-israeli-arabs

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-condemns-west-bank-mosque-attack-as-criminal-act-1.366525

[jake9jake9]

In this sense, 'Islamophobia' is a reaction to a specific religious and political agenda, whereas 'anti-Semitism' is just plain old racism.

I recommend you read this Islamophobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia)

[praetorian]

Refreshing to see that the British prison system is still delivering quality results to quality people, hopefully this will be the pattern for the long stay this individual will be detained at her Majesty's Pleasure.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23367877