I make mistakes. I have ocasionally regretted something I wrote. However I have never written anything motivated by hatred of another race or religion, yet I am too “extreme” for the mainstream media. But Melanie Phillips, darling of the Mail and the BBC, can write this kind of incitement to religious hatred:
Romney lost because, like Britain’s Conservative Party, the Republicans just don’t understand that America and the west are being consumed by a culture war. In their cowardice and moral confusion, they all attempt to appease the enemies within. And from without, the Islamic enemies of civilisation stand poised to occupy the void.
With the re-election of Obama, America now threatens to lead the west into a terrifying darkness.
Can somebody please show anything I have written which is anywhere near as ill-motivated? Or anything near as barking mad? Yet Phillips is mainstream and I am in some way understood to be “beyond the pale” of accepted opinion. How does this happen?
Islam is a religion. I know a great many extremely good Muslims. There are also some bad ones, just as there are good and bad Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, you name it. What if I were to write:
“In their cowardice and moral confusion, they all attempt to appease the enemies within. And from without, the Jewish enemies of civilisation stand poised to occupy the void.”
Why is not everybody protected from hate speech? Unfortunately we don’t have an appropriate word as strong as “racist” to describe the kind of vile bigot Phillips is, Muslims not being a race. For Phillips to accuse Obama of conspiring with racial intolerance while promoting evil and hatred herself, is unspeakable.
Actually if Phillips is acceptable as a mainstream commentator, I am proud that I am not.
The ramblings of Meleficent* are indeed odious but she’s merely preaching to the perverted. The only people who take her seriously are the people who take her seriously and no-one takes them seriously. Besides, her moral maze appearances are easily outweighed by Jeremy Hardy on the News Quiz.
*if you don’t get the reference look up Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.
“To slam the Far Right Evangelical Christian Zionist fanatics of the USA (or indeed, the uber-Zionist fanatics in the UK) is not to be anti-Christian, any more than to slam the fanatical Islamists is to be anti-Muslim”
….glad to see clarification on that. Unfortunately many on here don’t practice what you preach; making sweeping statements and insinuations against christians both in Europe and America, often adding to the mix the horrific crime of being a white or conservative Christian – unforgivable sins that obviously equate to full blown racism, bigotry and narrow mindedness of course. Feed them to the lions – the sequel
Thanks, Yakoub – excellent link and resource.
Okay, Chris, I do understand what you’re saying, point taken, thanks very much.
why to criticize the prostitute rather than not the brothel she works for? Who owns that place? Does anyone know?
Villager – it was a typo! But probably a Freudian one.
Chris J: Where are these comments? I seem to be seeing bizarre stuff being pulled out against people who are Jewish eg they’re doing something bad – and then turn out to be Jewish, in which case there are lots of ah ha! noises. Am finding it really quite uneasy.
Btw, Mary, to change the subject: were you suggesting that all Palestinians who work with Jewish people are ‘collaborators’? I’m sure you weren’t. But your comment made me wonder if, since you’re (rightly) passionate on the subject you had taken time to watch ‘To Shoot an Elephant’ – the documentary where the team are embedded with the Gazan ambulance crew? It’s available on youtube.
Anyway, the early Christians were thrown to the lions because they refused to fight under the Roman empire, as I think someone has already pointed out. Nothing, automatically, wrong with being a Christian senator, but a Christian senator who is pro-war is quite another thing. Certainly proper Christians are being demonised – look at the resignation of the canon of St Paul’s, who supported the (Christian) principles of Occupy.
Yakoub;
The Social Sciences might explain a lot about islamophobia, but there is something far simpler to understand.
When the Red Menace folded in 1989, the Mil/Ind Complex needed a reason to exist/thrive.
They just changed colors of fear to more emphasis on ‘brown’ as the new Machiavelli.
We must have enemies somewhere…..Look over there !!
Chris Jones
‘ the early Christians were thrown to the lions because they refused to fight under the Roman empire ‘
Isn’t that a bit like suggesting that UK Muslims are unpopular because they are against UK foreign policy? They are unpopular because people are disturbed by their rejection of the doctrine of God sharing His Divinity with somebody/something else.
Similarly, the early Christians were preaching Jesus’ pbuh doctrine of the Oneness of God at a time when Jews themselves were under the influence of Roman sacrificial polytheism and Mithraism from their West and Sunworshipper and Hindu avatarism, the Zombie-like indestructibility of reincarnated Holy men from their East.
They had been doing a roaring trade ferrying stuff between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. The temple of Solomon had been rebuilt. The last thing they wanted was a prophet, Jesus pbuh, calling them back to the worship of the One God.
No doubt there were Melanie Phillipses of the time, i.e. Jewish traditionalists telling the Roman authorities that the followers of Jesus pbuh were terrorists who were planning to destroy the world as they knew it, and the morality of lions/drones picking out suspects in a circus/GPS system compared with letting these dangerous ideas undermine the status quos.
New Zionist propaganda organisation; Zionists Breaking the Silence.
From Haaretz today:
“The launch of the Zionists Breaking the Silence campaign, headquartered in the Zionist Organization of America premises in Tel Aviv, was accompanied by an exhibition of photos in which IDF soldiers are shown helping Palestinians or making humanitarian gestures toward them.”
It was launched to counteract the website: Breaking the Silence, where Israeli soldiers testify their actions and experiences under the occupation of Palestine; a website the Zionists clearly object to, as reality is exposed, so propaganda must be utilised to maintain the myth that ”the IDF is the world’s most moral army.”
No of course not Technicolour, Sorry if it read like that, It was something to do with being told by a smudger that a Palestinian was partnering an Israeli cook about to do a TV series here after I had mentioned the programme. You know if Palestinians and Israelis can work and play together everything is A OK. The Occupation and occupiers don’t get mentioned.
@Ben
Muslims under the cushions replacing the reds under the beds is certainly part of the problem, which Fekete refers to. The starting point for that piece of brain-dead essentialising of 1.6 billion people begins with his Neoconship Samuel P. Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilizations. Huntingdon conceived his thesis in 1992, a year after I became Muslims, so obviously it doesn’t include me 😉
“They are unpopular because people are disturbed by their rejection of the doctrine of God sharing His Divinity with somebody/something else.”
I’m sure you didn’t mean that as the only, or even chief reason.
Very few ‘Christians’ know their own holy scriptures well enough to understand that the foundation of Islam is in Judeo/Christian roots. But immigrants are always an ‘Outgroup’ in that they display cultural/religious/genetic differences. I am, largely of Irish descent, and although they looked like everyone else, they spoke with an accent, ergo different, and discrimination was profound in the US. ‘Ingroups’ don’t deal well with those they see as ‘different’.
Yakoub; You’re a convert? Was it marriage that prompted it? Apropos of nothing. Just curious.
@ Glenn (1.52am) : no, mate, I think that a fund/private prosecution should be initiated not by a casual visitor to this board such as myself, but by one of the concerned, fervent, engaged, morally indignant people who pepper this board with posts about this, that and everything. Let’s see some action from one of them instead of this incessant blah blah blah….
According to today’s Guardian, Lord Mc Alpine “now lives in Italy”.
Bit disappointing, actually, since you’d have expected one of the architects of Thatcherism to lay his bones to rest in the country he did so much to create. But there you are…
Does anyone happen to know (1) WHEN exactly he moved to Italy, and (2) the given reason(s) why ?
Thanks, Mary – didn’t thinks so!
Ben Franklin
‘I’m sure you didn’t mean that as the only, or even chief reason.’
I know that religion is not uppermost in most people’s minds most of the time, but, like Income Tax and death, God is a subject that has to be addressed at some point and information stored how to respond to this challenge. For myself I decided to be taxed by making a limited company. I’m very uninterested in tax, but it continues to be interested in me.
Similarly I find myself to be not a very good human being, irrascible, impatient, irreverent and randy, and that bothers me. In Islam, the worship of God is seen as being in a very high currency. Profits up in spite of major losses from my own personality.
If God has a super-being, reincarnated avatar whizzing around the skies or sacrificing himself for other human beings, I still want to be pretty sure that the Omniscient Omnipotent God quasi Inland Revenue is going to accept my accounts and not chase me for some small rule I never heard about.
Pinning one’s hopes to a creed is something that everybody does sometime, and some people do several times, mostly because the first deal didn’t deliver the protection needed.
So the answer to your question is that Islam has always and will always worry all of those who have pinned their hopes on something they don’t trust completely. Yes, at a subliminal level the main objection people have to Islam is the worry that it’s direct contract with Almighty God without partners engenders in their hearts about their own arrangements for their own future security. They also notice the absence of that worry in those who worship God sincerely.
Craig Murray is typical when moans about not being told what to do by ancient scriptures. It is nothing whatsoever to do with culture, because he has many Muslim friends including family.
People resent the nagging doubts that Islam reminds them of in their hidden plans for their own destinies.
Meh, Guano, still at it I see! I rather like this set of propositions:
1. Each religion claims to be the true path to God, and claims that all others are the ways of the Heathens.
2. Each religion requires that its followers do not follow any other religions.
3. A person who follows a false religion, or none at all, will go to Hell.
4. Since the above leads to a contradiction, we must surmise that everyone is going to Hell.
But! there is an alternative to the my-religion-is-better-than-yours bun-fight. In general, people follow a religion that is culturally appropriate for them. Ergo Israelis are highly likely to follow Judaism, residents of the US Deep South are likely to become Christians, and citizens in Pakistan are likely to become Muslim. In each case it is highly unlikely, though possible, that each such individual would choose one of the major others.
It’d be nice to think that the good ones from each group will go to Heaven, regardless of their religion. God is, hopefully, smart enough to tell the difference regardless of the emblems the dead are wearing!
> God is a subject that has to be addressed at some point
Not for atheists and agnostics.
> I find myself to be not a very good human being …. randy
There’s nothing wrong with sexual feelings, even though you regularly insist on the opposite. If you believe in God, then you should believe that He invented sexuality, so if it is enjoyed consensually and respectfully between adults (of any number or gender) then it must be good. Sadly it was Man who invented the shame around it, and if you believe in God you’d be justified in being annoyed about that.
amen, jon!
Jon – good reply to a nice post by Guano. Might I add to your reply that it’s more than just a cultural or geographical predisposition – the overwhelming likelihood is that one will follow the exact religious doctrine, down to the fine denominations, of their parents. If they do change their belief system, it is usually through rather heavy indoctrination from some powerful, charismatic personality or group they happen to have come into contact with.
There may be people who’ve sat down by themselves, and through careful thought and study decided that some particular religion is the genuine one, and they will now seek out its followers and join it officially. But I’ve never heard of one – have you?
People get converted. Even if their immediate ancestors were “converted” by the sword, by outsiders that raped, looted, enslaved and murdered their way through their continent. You could hardly get a more stark example of people believing in whatever religion they have been brought up in, despite it being patently obvious that the disciples that brought this new faith were utterly hideous.
*
Guano: Very thought provoking, thank you. But I might suggest the main problem people (i.e. western, particularly white/semi-Christian etc.) have with Islam now is the propaganda we’ve been fed over the last decade or so (speaking as a westerner). The problem was merely a natural underlying uneasiness between countries and cultures before that. Recall that in secular states like pre-invasion Iraq, people of all faiths lived with each other quite happily.
Now, we’ve got two problems. One is the idea that all Muslims are at least a bit inclined to terrorism, suicide bombing and so on. The other is white guilt and fear, because we know Muslim countries have been treated terribly badly by us. We fear rightful revenge, because we know how much we’d like it if we were in the opposite position. The thought is, “Doesn’t this guy want to cut my head off? I sure would be thinking about it in his position!” White people, as you see them, are uneasy full stop around anyone of different cultures, because they’ve usually done something pretty appalling to them in the past.
Sorry to have gone off the point a bit.
@Craig (9 Nov, 2012 – 3:23 pm)
I wish you would inform your moderators of your policy, otherwise it just makes you look like a hypocrite.
A few weeks back a poster on another of your threads here called me a “F**KING J**”. Later, he retracted it saying “I regret calling you a jew because you’re too stupid to be jewish”. The moderators did nothing.
This same idiot ranted frequently and unrelentingly about the evils of Israel, and how it is uniquely and solely responsible for all the world’s ills, repeating quotes by Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis. Totally randomly and off-topic. And again no action by moderators.
I have nothing against legitimate criticism of Israel, or any other nation for that matter. But when such criticism is merely a thin veil for hate-speech it loses its credibility.
Ferret, try to remember that everyone bar Craig is a guest here, and speak with civility accordingly. The moderators that look after this platform are volunteers, and are not immediately keen to take your instructions.
FWIW, the Al-Hilli threads are unmoderatable – each has thousands of comments, and we don’t read everything. Report serious infractions as Craig suggests, and don’t respond to them, at all, whatsoever, in any form. It fuels them if you do, and it also becomes more difficult to delete items where there is a long conversation dependent on it.
Glenn, you’re right – the religion of the parents is a more influential factor.
Oddly yes, I do know of one person who worked his way through three or four belief systems before finding the one he was happy with. However I’d be pretty sure he wouldn’t claim to have found “the true one” – it would just be “the one for him”.
I agree about how Iraq seems to have been a Crusade, even though Western motivations were largely about politics, oil and capitalist greed. Wouldn’t it be great if the leaders of the Christian churches were to speak out against the violence of their state, so as to publicly disassociate imperialism with proper Christianity?
yesterdays self invitation by Mels fellow fascists, the EDL, to demonstrate in Norwich, on the eve of remembrance day, was met by the combined 1500 strong ‘we are Norwich’ campaign.
Some 11 forces helped to police the two marches eventually facing off in front of City Hall and the war memorial. They looked rough and drunk as usual, with some 100-150 of their supporters marching past the Castle mount. One incident saw 4 arrests. Chloe Smith dared to show her face but dare not speak, last time she got booed, when speaking at the annual LGBT Norwich gay pride march.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/video_large_police_presence_continues_in_norwich_tonight_following_earlier_arrests_at_english_defence_league_march_1_1688739
The most powerful moment was when 1500 people turned around and showed the EDL what they think of them, a most powerful rejection, one could not help but guff at them.
Headline from BBC online today:
“Israeli forces say they have fired warning shots into Syria after a mortar round fired from Syria hit an Israeli post in the Golan Heights.”
What it should be is:
Israeli forces say they have fired warning shots from Syria into Syria after a mortar round fired from Syria into Syria hit an Israeli illegal outpost in Syria.
“The Israel Defence Forces have filed a complaint [what chutzpah!!!] through the UN forces operating in the area, stating that fire emanating from Syria into Israel [Syria] will not be tolerated and “shall be responded to with severity”.
“Wouldn’t it be great if the leaders of the Christian churches were to speak out against the violence of their state, so as to publicly disassociate imperialism with proper Christianity?”
…it’s incredible how few have bothered.Makes you think:if they can’t speak out about that, what will they speak out about? Maybe their just as corrupted as the mainstream media…
ugh…Correction “Maybe they’re”…
” people follow a religion that is culturally appropriate for them. Ergo Israelis are highly likely to follow Judaism, residents of the US Deep South are likely to become Christians, and citizens in Pakistan are likely to become Muslim”
This is true, Jon, but I would think that conversions contrary to that model includes some of the good people making choices based on belief and sincerity. Others do cherry pick based on convenience. My father was southern Baptist, mom Catholic, so they compromised on the Presbyterians. Social Sets take first Tier. God’s will is 2nd. But Religion does entail a social contract, in that it’s adherents subscribe to an Ethos which strengthens the fabric of both spheres.
“. Yes, at a subliminal level the main objection people have to Islam is the worry that it’s direct contract with Almighty God without partners engenders in their hearts about their own arrangements for their own future security.”
I think people are afraid of the Unknown, and factors in there. You fear what you don’t understand.
All people hear about is the suicide vests, while the quiet and humble Muslim is nearly invisible.
“Jihad’ is misunderstood (slight understatement) but it is also a term, as i see it,that is abused and misinterpreted.
Just as there is a dearth of Christian/Jewish Religious leaders who decry the murderous acts of their political leaders, there is too much silence from the quiet, perspicacious Clerics.
Just sayin….
Sheesh….last comment was to Guano. Sorry, man.
Oliver Stone has co-authored a book….Truman was our worst Prez? I want to read his reasons.
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/11/11/telling-an-untold-us-history/