Poster Girl

I hold two passports - British and Australian. I'm very sad indeed to say that I'd prefer the former to be an English passport nowadays but I have no reservations about the Australian one. I'd give anything to have a Prime Minister like John Howard over this side of the world, and I'm very proud about the role the Australian troops have been playing in the war against the 21st Century equivalent of the Nazis.

Beccy Cole is an Australian singer who is also proud of the Diggers and she has toured some of the places they are stationed at the moment, entertaining them, supporting them and, it has to be said, significantly enhancing the landscape wherever she has gone. That has made her some enemies among the anti-civilisation movement; in some places her posters have been defaced and torn down.

She has responded with a song.


Via Tim Blair, who got it via Blackfive, who got it... well, you can read the other links if you click through.

But before you do, listen to the lady.

Light Blogging

Next to no blogging today - too much work.

It's all about oil

We knew at the time that France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq was largely driven by its oil interests - Elf was a major player in Iraq's oil program. Then we learned that a bit of graft might have been an influence.

Now EUReferendum has a characteristically excellent post surveying French foreign policy. Sample:

Given that the continuous and expanding threads of evidence point to France as a country that has, from Vietnam through Algeria and a succession of African colonies up to and including the Ivory Coast, exercised a wholly malign influence, we really do have to ask ourselves whether this is a country with which we can afford to be associated.

Read it all.

Just a guess

But has anyone seen this man leaving or entering the Iranian Embassy?

Muslim Action Committee Representative Supports Political Violence

In the comments to this post, Ismaeel-Hanif Hijazi, a representative and spokesman for the allegedly moderate Muslim Action Committee, made the following comment:

Ismaeel said...

I believe people shouldn't be threatened or attacked if they make reasoned and informed criticisms. However when they are gratuitiously insulting and provoking, my stance is somewhat less rigid. After all isn't a provocation a defence in English law? And we are after all discussing about freedom of expression within the context of obeying the law. In case you are in any doubt by the way i uphold obeying the law of the land in which you are a citizen with rights and duties.

(Emphasis added).

There's no getting round it. Ismaeel thinks that criticism is sufficient provocation for violence. The fact that he tries to argue this is within the law makes absolutely no difference.

The Muslim Action Committee was formed to organise demonstrations over the Danish cartoons controversy and made much of their "peaceful" and "non-violent" stance. They plainly retain the right to be violent if they consider it appropriate. They are closely allied with the Khomeinist Islamic Human Rights Committee and have been trying to stake a claim to public recognition on the back of that crisis and that organisation.

Turkeys don't vote for Christmas

Is the Labour Party facing electoral meltdown as a direct result of its own policies?

I wondered in an earlier post what the motives might be for the recent change in attitude towards Muslims on the part of the government:

It must be a deliberate policy. I can see no other explanation than that their private polling has revealed a serious threat to their position with the bedrock of their support, the white working class.

Now there is a changed approach to migrant labour and E.U. expansion. From The Times:

"Two years ago the Government predicted between 5,000 and 13,000 people a year would come to work from the eight countries who were joining the European Union. According to official estimates around 600,000 have arrived.

"Quite a few Labour MPs are now picking up a lot of anguish in their constituencies over the impact of this influx of low-paid workers. John Denham has stated that in his Southampton constituency the wage rates for labourers have now halved. That directly harms a lot of natural Labour Party supporters.

David Cameron has been making reassuring noises about taxation and spending - reassuring for the enormous public sector workforce who would feel their jobs were threatened by cuts. He knows Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. But perhaps a lot of Labour voters are wondering whether they did just that by electing "New" Labour three times in succession.

Migration affects core traditional Labour voters (who are actually very conservative, socially) more than any other section of the population, in downward pressure on wages, reduced availability of housing, the social changes to the places where they live, increased crime and the sense that the place of their birth has become a foreign country wherein their children have to attend schools in which even English speakers are in a minority.

It's also true that while the Tories have been agonising about "looking like Britain", with more gay, more women and more ethnic minority candidates, the Labour elite don't look anything like their own supporters. That's why Prescott has been kept around so determinedly.

Traditional Labour voters are very hostile to the Tories, but not necessarily to the idea of voting for some other party. UKIP has lost the most boring party leader of my lifetime - in a competitive field - and now has in Nigel Farage a man who can perform better than any of the major party spokespeople, when he is on advantageous ground. It remains to be seen how he will do with issues like the Health Service.

And then, unfortunately, there is the B.N.P. - a socialist party, but of the national rather than international variety.

The evidence of changed government policies towards Islam and eastern European migration suggest the Labour Party is gravely concerned.

English Constitutional Settlement

Ian Dale writes:

I;m a co-signatory on a letter to the Daily Telegraph announcing the setting up f an English Constitutional Convention. As resgular readres know, I favour an English Parliament to solve the democratic deficit now being experienced by the people of England. I don't want anything like the white elephant of the Scottish Parliament, but it's clear that the status quo is not enough. Sometime in the next next few years this is an issue which all parties have to take seriously. At the moment the Conservative position is that English votes on English measures will solve everything. It won't, and is merely a short term band-aid solution. Anyway, we'll be talking about this subject on tonight's Vox Politix, so hope you'll be watching!...

Sir – The current "post-devolution settlement" is iniquitous to England.Scotland and Wales have their own Parliament and Assembly, and yet are still over-represented in the House of Commons; the West Lothian Question has yet to be answered – why should Scottish and Welsh MPs preside over English matters when MPs representing English constituencies have no reciprocal right? And the long-discredited Barnett formula, the system by which regional funding is allocated, remains grossly unfair to the taxpayers of England.It has been nearly 10 years since the people of Scotland and Wales were consulted in a referendum prior to devolution. No such courtesy has been extended to the people of England, and our politicians seem reluctant even to allow open debate on the subject.Dividing England into "regions", while leaving Scotland and Wales as "nations", is rightly unpopular and undemocratic. Stopping Scottish and Welsh MPs voting on English issues will cause as many problems as it solves. The question of the establishment of an English parliament must be considered and the option placed in front of the electorate. At a meeting in the House of Commons today, the English Constitutional Convention will be formally established, with the aim of promoting debate and raising public awareness of England's democratic deficit. As patrons to the convention, we urge the Government, Opposition and all the people of the United Kingdom actively to participate in that debate. England will be heard. The time for silence is over.

Lord Beaumont of Whitley; Lord Stoddart of Swindon; John Horam MP; Professor Hugo De Burgh; Professor Jeremy Dibble; Prof Roger Scruton; Dr. Gerald Morgan Trinity Dublin; Jervis Kay QC; Garry Bushell Journalist; Iain Dale Conservative commentator; Neil Addison Barrister; Mike Knowles, Chairman, Campaign for an English Parliament; Robin Tilbrook, Chairman, English Democrats; Christine Constable, Chairman, English Lobby; Bishop Michael Reid; Rev Richard Martin; Richard Long, Solicitor; Andy Smith, Past President, Chartered Institute of Journalists; Simon Lee, Lecturer, Hull University; Prof Charles Greenawalt

This initiative is overdue and deserves support.

Despatches

Channel Four last night broadcast a debate about Muslims and Free Speech. At the end, after a stream of Muslim speakers attacked free speech, a vote was held: Is free speech under attack from Muslims?

And yes, the irony was that obvious.

The vote was "no", narrowly. Why? Partly because the question voted on was badly worded. All Muslims? Some Muslims? Only Muslims?

I think people were generally voting on whether or not they thought the attacks they had just been witnessing from some Muslims against free speech were justified.

I assume (from watching who applauded when during the debate) that the large Muslim component of the audience - it looked like some 30% to judge from headscarves and obviously religious dress - generally voted in favour of the suppression of free speech.

Others feel it's nice to be nice and were voting in disapproval of contentious speech of all kinds. Most people feel we can live without the noisy, obscene and marginalised fringes of society. (We can't, incidentally).

"How would you feel if I insulted your mother?" asked Tony Soprano at one stage during the debate. OK, maybe it wasn't Soprano. Maybe it was someone from Hizb ut Tahrir. It's significant how this language of offence and revenge has spread from the New Jersey Mafia, professional gangsters everywhere, and the villages of Albania, Sicily, Corsica and the Hindu Kush into mainstream society so that a young man can stand at a podium explaining the ancient basis of the vendetta - that all insults must be avenged - with aggressive language and posture, while a nice middle class liberal presenter nods approvingly from his podium.

Unfortunately, Jon Snow is not the only person in our society to have become so degraded.

UPDATE:

Excellent reviews of this debate at The Select Society and Oliver Kamm's site.

Ismaeel, in the comments, points out a different view, from someone who was in the audience, the Gay Jihadi.

Pope Warns Scientists

Continuing his crusade against scientific materialism and rational thought, the Pope warned scientists yesterday that they risked sharing the fate of the mythical Icarus:

"Letting yourself be seduced by discovery without paying attention to the criteria of a deeper vision could lead to the drama the myth speaks of," he told the Pontifical Lateranense University at the inauguration of a new academic year.

What on earth does this mean?

Take Richard Dawkins, a man who surely fits the bill for Pope Benedict. What is or will be his fate? In what practical way will he share the fate of Icarus?

The Pope's words were meaningless drivel, I'm afraid.

Kidnapped

An American soldier has gone missing in Iraq.

Perhaps he'll be dressed badly, given so much food he puts on weight, and will have to endure seeing one of his abductors standing near his Bible, in a way he finds disrespectful.

Or maybe he'll be tortured with electric drills, dragged behind a truck then decapitated.

I don't support Guantanamo Bay. It should be closed and the American government should respect and observe the Geneva conventions. But for the first time, this is not in order to ensure that captured US troops will be treated equally fairly. They won't be. Not under any circumstances, not in Iraq, nor in Afghanistan.

Catholic Taliban

A campaign by extremist Catholics to out gay clergy has been likened to a Catholic Taliban:

Catholic Truth believe outing gay clergy would be a “great work of charity”. The group has an office in Edinburgh’s Princes Street and claims to have over 1000 people on its mailing list .

McKeever told the Sunday Herald at the time of the anti-gay launch: “The key objective behind naming homosexual priests and bishops is to raise awareness of the problem within the church .”

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

I emailed Ismaeel (see earlier posts) privately, but he posted the mail on his blog. Here it is, with his comments:

PETER RISDON CALLS FOR CIVILITY
Peter Risdon has emailed me the following. The interesting thing about this email from the self-styled champion of unfettered free speech is his constant calls for civility. I have placed the appropriate sections in bold italics below. Maybe this dialogue thing is working.....
Ismaeel,
I had the courtesy to post on both blogs and found your failure to reciprocate irritating, so I deleted your comment. In hindsight I should have left it there, so I'll post an entry pointing to your site.
But I do find some of your language aggressive ("we won't take this lying down...") and patronising ("you should learn..."). Dialogue is a good thing. Constructive criticism is also a good thing - there are worse alternatives as the recent increase of physical attacks on Muslims, a woman having the veil torn from her face, four Muslims attacked last night in a mosque, show.
I would be greatly encouraged if you would accept the hand I have always extended to you, from the invitation for you to provide a speaker for the march rally in Trafalgar Square, through my request that the cartoons not be displayed, to this present response to an aggressive ad hominem attack by you on your blog with an invitation to dialogue.
Every time you have reacted out of hostility and paranoia - as over the debate in Oxford - you have been wrong. That will remain the case. My attitude is completely genuine. I am an atheist, I dislike extreme religion but not the people who practise it. Hate the sin, love the sinner, as the Catholics say.
Regards,
Peter.

Actually Peter the attitude of loving the sinner and hating the sin is one shared by a true Islamic perspective and was the first lesson given to me by my Shaykh. I'm glad you are appreciating the importance of civility in dialogue.

The hand is still there, open. I hope that, at some point, in the future, Ismaeel will grasp it.

Prisoners of Conscience in Iran

Azarmehr reports:

A vicious assault on political prisoners in Gowhardasht took place yesterday. The attack was carried out by ordinary criminals who are kept alongside political prisoners in Gowhardasht. They used knives and cut glass to injure the political prisoners.

Behrouz Javid Tehrani, one of the victims of this attack has had 17 stitches and many of his teeth broken. Despite his injuries he is still kept in the cell, where he fears further attacks.

In a separate incident, two students in Shiraz, Hamid Kargar and Bahador Dareh-Shoori were abducted by plain clothes agents. The two were recently expelled from university for their political activities. Their families are unaware of where they have been taken to.

L'enfantifada

There's a lot of comment on anti-jihadi sites and blogs right now about unrest in French suburbs. Incidents like the torching of a bus are described as an intifada. So far, most of the MSM put more weight on social conditions - poverty, unemployment - that were said to have been behind the riots last year.

The problem is that the attitudes of radical Islam have permeated the identities of Western Muslim underclasses in just the same way as, and alongside, those of Gangsta rap. Thus, the clothing of these people reflect US urban chic, they drink and take drugs, pimp and deal, steal and threaten - all completely un-Islamic - at the same time as professing to be proud of their Islamic identity and basing that identity more on bin Laden than on Omar Khayyam or Andalucian astronomers.

There used to be a similar pattern with Rastafarianism. A real Rasta, and a real devout Muslim, is as puritan and boring as a devout Christian or a Mormon door-knocker. Yet in the 1980s a lot of street criminals grew the locks, listened to reggae and thought of themselves as Rasta.

In some ways, describing the French unrest as an intifada is just buying the learnt rhetoric of a part of society that has long known the benefit of regurgitating any philosophy that might boost their sense of self-righteousness. The language of liberal criminology and sociology - that they are victims of poverty and it is all society's fault - is also regurgitated. The "policeman's hat" syndrome is another example, learned from miscarriages of justice: "I might have been caught red-handed in a bank with a striped T shirt, eye mask and bag marked 'swag', raping a pensioner, but the policeman who arrested me wasn't wearing a hat and I happen to know that's illegal, so while this vicious, corrupt police force continues to victimise me I remain a victim, the [insert town here] one".

Buying into this, in turn, reinforces the sense of self-justification in the rioters. We're not just vandals and thugs, we're an intifada, like the Palestinians, victims of injustice, noble, resisting tyranny.

Yet in a way, they are victims. It is harder for them to get work in France than it need be because of racism and economic and social policy that discourages the hiring of unskilled or young workers. A great deal of the problems of the underclass come from a lack of opportunity and an excess of help, the sort of help that makes the giver look and feel better while actually assisting the recipient not one jot.

The French social model, excessive regulation and excessive employee featherbedding, together with excessive welfarism, wastes people as well as money. And then they riot.

This problem isn't helped by radical Islam, but it isn't the consequence of it either.

Bye bye emacs

What the hell, why not blog about technology too.

I've always used emacs/tramp for editing remote files but when it hangs, it's easy to lose the file itself, which is a major nuisance (the backupfile~ stays there so not all is lost). And boy, does it hang. Every other ssh connection I use - shell, vfs etc - is fine but not tramp.

Today this has been a major strain on my productivity.

But Gnome-vfs handles the remote connection fine. If I switched to KDE, KIO-slaves would do the same job, maybe even better. Shame, I like emacs, but there are a lot of good programming editors there and I can't afford to lose two hours as I have today every time there's something flaky about my broadband line.

It's an emotional moment... I've used emacs for years. When I started using tramp, there was no real alternative for remote editing, now you can use pretty much anything. Next you know, I'll be using a graphical IDE...

Libertarianism and Immigration

An excellent essay here from Scottish Libertarian David Farrer. Libertarians are often criticized as hypocrites if they want any restraint on immigration. While some might be, in fact the criticisms are generally based on a misunderstanding of libertarianism.

If welfare systems are not identical (or indeed exist at all) then there can be no free market in labour (or the movement of people). Equally, in a society in which everything is privately owned, then nobody would be able to take up residence there without an invitation from a property owner, or the purchase of some of the property.

This is a very quick summary, and the piece is worth a read.

This could be read as a device to avoid any immigration (we do have welfare systems, they are unequal between countries, and we don't have 100% property ownership so there can be limits on migration and they can be whatever I decide, arbitrarily, to make them). But I don't think that's the idea.

The theory of any political idea is not necessarily founded in the world as we find it, but rather an aspiration of the world as we would like it to be. Of course, most libertarians are to at least some degree pragmatists anyway. While they do tend to favour immigration on principle, they also often want to recognise the problems that large scale migration can cause in the world we actually find ourselves in.

Sign of the Times

Well, I did warn:

The consequences of giving preferential treatment to extremists like the MCB for a decade, of deferring to the real or imagined sensitivities of a small section of the population, and thereby causing genuine resentment, dislike and even hatred of all Muslims generally within society, then reversing the position and releasing a constant stream of remarks, initiatives and policy changes that feed this cultivated dislike could be horrendous.

And now:

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of racial assault after four men were attacked in a mosque last night.

Muslims are widely perceived as combining aggression with a victim complex born out of paranoia. Pretty much every non-Muslim population in the world feels under assault from radical Islam. It's a very dangerous situation because if one fifth of the world's population is Muslim, four fifths are not.

One infrequently commented-on quality of satire, criticism, mockery and abuse is that they act as a safety valve. If people are denied those outlets for their feelings, then the pressure builds until there is an explosion. Recent attacks on free expression have had this effect.

These recent attacks on free expression are as much to blame for assaults on people coming out of mosques as any idiotic special privileges accorded to Muslims by the government and the police. The fatuous habitual cries of "Islamophobic", used to stifle debate and criticism, have made matters much, much worse.

Dialogue, honest criticism, debate and equal treatment for everybody, regardless of race, sex, gender and religion provide the only way forward.

Dialogue 3. Silly and Baseless Slander

Again, in his comment to this post, Ismaeel said:

My objections here on this site are to the rather silly and baseless slander that you have thrown around on your site like your description of the MCB forcing veils on women, encouraging honor killings and forced marriages etc. That kind of "critical analysis" we can do without it to facilitate better understanding. That requires you to be civil. Hopefully one day you will understand that need.
I'm sure you will seek to defend yourself by saying you were being flippant and only seeking to amuse.

I assume this is a reference to an earlier post of mine where I said:

The consequences of giving preferential treatment to extremists like the MCB for a decade, of deferring to the real or imagined sensitivities of a small section of the population, and thereby causing genuine resentment, dislike and even hatred of all Muslims generally within society, then reversing the position and releasing a constant stream of remarks, initiatives and policy changes that feed this cultivated dislike could be horrendous.

Why are Labour doing this? It must be a deliberate policy. I can see no other explanation than that their private polling has revealed a serious threat to their position with the bedrock of their support, the white working class. Having caused the problem, by favouring Muslim extremists to the great personal cost especially of moderate Muslims in the country who have had to endure a surge of religious conservatism, veilings, forced marriage, curtailed female education, lost voting rights for the weakest (especially women) and "honour" violence, they are now reversing the position, also to the potential great cost of moderate Mulsims in this country.

That's a silly misrepresentation, Ismaeel. I think that the cultivation of the MCB and of the even more extreme MAB and IHRC has created a situation in which yet more extreme organisations have begun to campaign through proxies for veiling, and in which honour killings and forced marriages have become more common.

You yourself told me in Oxford that you consider the first part of this to be true, that the government has favoured extremist groups at the expense of more reasonable ones. We specifically mentioned the MCB in this conversation.

So no, I wasn't being flippant. And I don't find it amusing.

Dialogue 2. The Joy of Anxt

Ismaeel wrote, in the comment cited below:

I do not wrestle with my beliefs, I am very happy and secure in them and the discussion of the MfFE did not cause me any anxt although it may have caused others some.

This encapsulates a profound difference between some religious thinking, and the secular world. Of course, many religious people (including, according to the Bible, Jesus) have wrestled with doubt; this why the word "faith" has such importance and does not, for everybody, just mean blind acceptance.

But for secularists, doubt is everything. Doubt informs us, makes us question, makes us learn. This is why it is good practice in scientific papers for the writer(s) actually to point out real and potential problems in their work. They are seeking the truth, not trying to impose their findings on the world (I repeat, this is good, rather than invariable, practice).

Only by doubting the accepted wisdom do we investigate and learn new things. Without doubt, we would not be able to communicate like this, because computers would not exist.

Some religious people try to capitalise on this, dishonestly. In a previous post, I quoted from the ask the imam website:

It is our belief that Allah is the creator of the universe and all its contents. The concept of evolution is un Islamic. The animals, humans, etc all were created by the command of Allah and will be created by His command. The ever changing conclusions of the scientists is sufficient of their false research.

Note the last sentence. Their "false research" into this area has sequenced a full human genome. Genetic engineering - the direct manipulation of one part of the mechanism of evolution - holds out the promise of cures for cancers, Altzheimer's disease and will revolutionise human life this coming century.

We need the contribution of the Islamic world, of the brains, inventiveness and inquiry the world saw in the past. Don't get left behind.

Ismaeel, you should wrestle with your beliefs. You'd be stronger for it.

Dialogue 1. Maybe.

In comments to my post below, Ismaeel has said he might engage in dialogue, which is very welcome, and has made a partial response to my comment at his blog.

Ismaeel, if you want proper space to develop the discussion of any point let me know by email including the wording you want to use, and I'll post it as a new thread.

As a starting point, he said:

[Risdon had suggested that] we didn't give a response to the idea of non-Muslims privatley viewing the Danish cartoons. Actually we did, on several occassions. Islam was, centuries before the west, adamant about the absolute sanctity of the private sphere, whatever went on behind closed doors was no buisness of the state. However what we also made clear is that when you noise it abroad that you are going to exhibit such socialy destructive material, then it ceases to be a private concern.

I regard the exhibition of the Danish cartoons and for that matter the exhibition of the holocaust cartoons in Iran to be uncivil and anti-social and am opposed to both.

Islam in fact prescribes detailed rules of behaviour, in private as well as in public, in a way no other religion does. See here and here, for example. Moreover, and again unusually, Islam makes no distinction between the state and religious authority, prescribing laws for the regulation of every aspect of human conduct. Al Sistani has issued fatwas concerning, among other things, masturbation (not allowed), having sex while looking in a mirror (allowed) and oral sex ("It's allowed provided no liquid coming out swallowed").

Whatever you mean by "the sanctity of the private sphere", you cannot seriously be suggesting that Islam in all its manifestations - I am simply repeating your generalisation here - regards private conduct as beyond its sphere of influence. This is why my question is so pertinent: are you trying to extend at least some aspects of Islamic law and practice to the private actions of non-Muslims in this country? A direct yes or no answer to that question would be welcome.

I infer from your words that you would answer "no but". You seem to be saying that it is unacceptable for anyone to do something in private that you regard as "uncivil" if they publicise the fact that they are doing so. You have gone to some pains to define what you consider civility to be. You do, therefore, seek to regulate the actions of non-Muslims in the public domain, and also in the private domain if they "noise ... abroad" what they are doing. In a society that is not traditionally or historically Islamic and in which Muslims constitute a small minority, this is quite astonishingly arrogant.

I assume you advocate the right of women to wear the veil, which most Britons find to some extent offensive. If this is so, you seem to be advocating the right of Muslims to offend everyone else, but also their right to dictate what other people can do, either in private or in public.

Say it ain't so.

North Korea

Time to relax.

Peter Risdon Watch

Ismaeel, who was a leading light in the Muslim Action Committee, has just made this post on his blog:

PETER RISDON WATCH?
Does Peter Risdon need a watch site all to himself? That is the question. After being very charming and polite to Maulana Arif and myself in Oxford all those months ago and doing the right thing in telling people not to bring the Danish cartoons to the March for Free Expression, he is now back after months of hiatus practically foaming at the mouth with Islamophobic rhetoric as well as confessing his rather murky and rather shocking past.

He has also announced he is going to launch some sort of media site to promote his rather immature understanding of freedom of expression in the near future.

So if anyone's got the time, i think a Peter Risdon watch site might be handy.

Anyways it goes without saying we won't be taking any nonsense from him lying down, or standing up or sitting down for that matter either.

Though I am intrigued by the final paragraph, and wonder what posture he plans to adopt - a crouch, perhaps - I have posted a comment as follows:

Hello Ismaeel. People say that the word "Islamophobic" is just a term of abuse designed to divert genuine and reasonable criticism, and I don't think you have done anything here to disprove that notion.

I remain polite, would aspire to be charming, and enjoyed talking with Maulana Arif and you in Oxford a few months ago. I thought we had taken a few faltering steps towards establishing a genuine dialogue, so am disappointed to see you revert to this sort of strident rhetoric.

If you do ever feel able to return to civil dialogue, the door will always be open. In Oxford, I told you that I thought we had a tendency to glare at one another in mutual hostility and suspicion from opposing trenches, hurling abuse at one another, and that I would like to help break down that pattern.

You are aware that I am a secularist, that I value secular, tolerant and liberal society and am gravely concerned at what I see as the threat posed to that by resurgent and extremist religions of all kinds, but especially Islam.

I make no criticism of you for your campaigns against freedom of expression, and indeed other freedoms, and you cannot reasonably expect me to be silent about my concerns. But you could work to break down some of the mutual suspicions and hostility instead of, on the face of it, simply trying to dominate everyone else.

When we spoke, there was an unresolved issue. I asked whether you were trying to ban people from displaying the Danish cartoons in private places. The point of principle there was discussed also: do you seek to impose Islamic religious law and mores on non-Muslims, even in private?

I invited you to make it clear that you did not, and to go further and state that you accept the validity of an exhibition of these cartoons, in the context of controversial cartoons more generally (shown together with the holocaust denial cartoons recently entered for a competition in Iran, and the arguably obscene anti-western and anti-semitic cartoons that are common currency in much of the Islamic world). You didn't answer either way then.

I invite you to consider this question again now.

In closing, let me remind you of the heated controversy on the march for free expression blogsite that followed your ideas about the minimum age at which women, or indeed girls, could be married. You realised during this exchange that you had made yourself vulnerable to criticism on a subject for which there is absolutely no tolerance in western culture. You might remember that I have never sought to capitalise on that, or other similar, subjects with you personally. I understand you have to wrestle with some difficult issues, given your beliefs, and I felt it right not to descend to ad hominem attacks based on this.

You are now aware that I have had a similar wrestling match with myself in recent months. It is such a shame that you have not felt able to reciprocate.

Light or no blogging today

Normal service will be resumed on Monday.

Letter to Egyptian Government Press Office

Thursday 19th October, 2006
Cambridge, UK

Dear Sirs,

Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad

I have read with concern at the website http://www.persecution.org/ that Mr el-Akkad has been held as a prisoner in an Egyptian prison for eighteen months, according to his lawyer “only because he has chosen a different belief, to be a Christian.”

People in the U.K. think of Egypt as a beautiful and historic nation with strong ties of friendship to ourselves.Your importance in the Arab and Muslim world is well known. It would come as a considerable and gravely worrying surprise to the British public if a man really could be imprisoned in your country simply for following his beliefs and his conscience.

I publish a blog in the U.K. and am involved with a new media organisation that is about to launch. I intend to write at length about Mr el-Akkad's situation and to bring it to the attention of the public and media more generally. But I hope that the report quoted above is in fact mistaken and would like to give you this opportunity to let me know the full story of this man, and indeed to deny the report if it is untrue.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Peter Risdon.

Fish, Barrel, Gun

Ask the Imam is a site you can always go to if you want to find something to make fun of. Tim Blair picked on a question about... well, evolution and hair gel. Since Tim didn't give the question in full, here it is:

Do we believe in the evolution of animals such as birds etc. How old is the earth and for how long has there been life on earth according to Islam. What is the ruling on hair gel.

I am asked about evolution and i do not know what muslims believe so I cannot answer them. Please can you give me the correct islamic perspective on these issues.

The answer is as follows:

It is our belief that Allah is the creator of the universe and all its contents. The concept of evolution is un Islamic. The animals, humans, etc all were created by the command of Allah and will be created by His command. The ever changing conclusions of the scientists is sufficient of their false research.

It is permissible to use hair gel.

I've a feeling that this is wrong on both counts.

But what struck me most was the question, which paraphrases as "Please tell me what I think about this issue". I've heard that sort of thing before, I thought... and then I remembered. A girl I used to vaguely know, an acquaintance of an acquaintance, as it were. She was the niece of a Conservative Cabinet Minister and a member of the Socialist Workers Party (passing with flying colours the membership requirement of all parties with the word "worker" in their name, that she did not know which end of a hammer was the handle).

Discussing politics with her was odd. Someone would make a point and then she would strain, not to think, but to remember. What is the party line on this one? What have I been told I should think about this issue?

Maybe the alliance between the SWP and the Islamofascists isn't so strange after all.

Lord Harris Dies

The Adam Smith Institute reports the death of Lord Harris of High Cross:

We are sorry to report that Ralph Harris (Lord Harris of High Cross) died of a suspected heart attack at 8am this morning.

Together with Arthur Seldon and John Wood, Ralph Harris built the Institute of Economic Affairs into a power-house of free-market and classical liberal ideas, and for many years Ralph was the IEA's public face. This work was marked by the peerage which came soon after Mrs Thatcher's election in 1979. True to his principles, however, he allied himself with no political party, and sat on the cross benches in the House of Lords.

Ralph was a leading figure in the Mont Pelerin Society, the international body of pro-freedom scholars set up by F A Hayek in 1947, and became its President 1982-84.

His outgoing, optimistic personality, won him many friends – even among those politicians he chided for doing the wrong thing. It enabled him to bring many people into the free-market movement, and those of us who created the Adam Smith Institute were among those who benefited from his early support and encouragement.

I can vouch for the latter. In October 1983, I opened a shop selling reading glasses without prescription, and Harris attended the opening party to offer his support. He was exceedingly kind to my exhausted 23 year old self (we had still been painting the shop interior at 4:00am that morning, sustained only by the 24 hour sandwich shop in Upper Street).

He was animated, fiercely intelligent and always willing to engage in a quick exchange of correspondence. I have a card from him on my mantlepiece at home at the moment, a cartoon of Harris as St George fighting off the dragon of European bureaucracy on the front, on the rear a reply to a question I raised over a point made in his book Murder A Cigarette.

His willingness to engage so widely even in what must sometimes have been irksome dialogue undoubtedly helped spread the awareness of the merits of free markets and liberty. We could use a few more like Lord Harris.

R.I.P.
via Guido Fawkes

Prisoner of Conscience

News from Egypt:

A Muslim sheikh jailed in Egypt for 18 months has declared from his prison cell that he is under arrest for “insulting Islam” by becoming a Christian.

Egypt’s secret police transferred Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad, 57, to the Wadi el-Natroun Prison last month. He was told he would remain there indefinitely unless he agreed to work as a government informer against other converts to Christianity.

According to the prisoner’s Cairo attorney, Athanasius William, his client remains incarcerated in this desert prison “only because he has chosen a different belief, to be a Christian.”

El-Akkad was imprisoned without charges for more than a year after officials of the State Security Investigation (SSI) arrested him in Cairo on April 6, 2005.

Although subjected to repeated interrogations, the former Muslim was never told the specific accusations against him. But several of his cellmates spread rumors that he was converting and baptizing people into Christianity, sparking verbal abuse and at least one severe beating from a fellow prisoner.

via The Sandmonkey

Search of the day

From India:

Will wudhu clean the najis from kafir.

Iraqi Blogs

Most mornings, I have to turn off Radio 4's Today programme from time to time, out of annoyance at some particularly distorted or agenda-laden piece. This morning, I just can't face it at all. So I'm starting the day with the Iraqi blogosphere.

There's a controversy raging over an angry post from one of the most pro-American blogs, Iraq The Model, that responded to the recent study of Iraqi mortality rates that was published in the Lancet. Here is a taste of their anger:

Among the things I cannot accept is exploiting the suffering of people to make gains that are not the least related to easing the suffering of those people. I’m talking here about those researchers who used the transparency and open doors of the new Iraq to come and count the drops of blood we shed.

Human flesh is abundant and all they have to do is call this hospital or that office to get the count of casualties, even more they can knock on doors and ask us one by one and we would answer because we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.

We believe in what we’re struggling for and we are proud of our sacrifices.

Iraqi Konfused Kid took exception to this post and an e-mail and blog post debate then followed, which included some of the most prominent citizen commentators in Iraq. Konfused Kid summarises the debate here.

Salam Adil (not his real name), a London-based Iraqi provides another interesting commentary on this controversy while Treasure of Baghdad surveys the opinions of some Iraqi bloggers, many of them involved in the Iraq The Model debate.

As a pro-war, pro-intervention, pro-regime change advocate, I have a duty to read and understand these conflicting opinions from Iraq, and to use them to question my own opinions. So I did.

Treasure of Baghdad's questions included:

Compared to the current situation in Iraq, how different was it before the war?

and

Do you think the war was worth it or not? Why?

Answers to the latter question ranged from:

Yes. The war was totally worth it.

to

Not worth it. All the deaths, the injured & handicapped people & all those who had forced to leave their homes are big price for what we got today.

Most of the replies were more nuanced, with one (from a blogger called Zeyyad) being:

I'm afraid to answer that question.

It's clear from the replies that while that particular jury is out right now, a year ago they would have been overwhelmingly of the opinion that the invasion had been worth it. The problem has not so much been the war, as the "peace" that has followed. And with peace like this, who needs wars?

So what's happening in the West right now? The British army is openly, on websites and in newspapers, arguing for withdrawal. Public opinion follows. The U.S. seems to be on the brink of an anti-war swing. Australia stands firm, naturally.

I still stand by my support for the invasion, though my reasons were not those given by the UK and US governments. I have been, therefore, a fellow traveller rather than a supporter of Bush and Blair. There's no doubt that the aftermath has been an almighty cock-up, though. But we are where we are.

So what would happen if there was an abrupt withdrawal of western armies from Iraq? The least plausible answer is the most commonly given, that a new strongman would emerge and unify the country. Sunni, Shia and Kurd elements are too strong for any to be overcome completely in their areas of control.

Most likely, there'd be a Balkans style break up complete with ethnic cleansing, something that is happening already. If anything, there is good evidence that the presence of western troops is acting as a brake on the rate of murder, unlike the failure of UN missions in the former Yugoslavia, but that's too complicated to get sidetracked into here so I'll post about it later.

If true, this means that the people urging a withdrawal of troops now because there has been a high level of mortality so far are in fact urging that the mortality rate should be left to climb, unencumbered, to even higher levels.

And what of the Lancet survey? It's hard to say. Stop-the-War folk have embraced it and pro-war types argued against it. That's predictable enough. There are clearly problems with these sorts of statistical approaches, and the same team had to discard some of their own data during the 2004 study, that showed a population of Fallujah of perhaps 60,000 people (the rest had fled the "Second Battle of Fallujah") sustained casualties of 200,000 dead. (A pro-Lancet argument why this doesn't matter is made here).

All very interesting, when it comes to future decisions. For now, we are bound to stay and help make Iraq become peaceful, remain democratic, and gain the full and unencumbered independence of the West and its neighbours that it deserves.

Student Protests in Iran

Gooya News has pictures of large demonstrations in Tehran. Canadian-based Iranian blogger The Spirit of Man reports:

Second day of student protests continued today in Tehran over the illegal detention of student leaders and regime's interference in the internal election of student committees. The reason to interfere in these election is because regime doesn't want vocal and freedom loving students to lead these committees at all.

Blogged in solidarity with Iranian democrats everywhere.

Al Quaeda declare an Islamic state in Baghdad

The Iraqi blogger Iraq The Model reports:

Nothing changed in my life as a Baghdadi since my city was announced a part of the Islamic State of al-Qaeda.

Of course I did not expect an improvement in electricity, security or other services but I was at least expecting a change in life style under the leadership of the new caliph Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (Abu who??).
...
So what has changed then since the declaration?
Really, what was the cost or the effect on the ground other than the ink they used to print their announcement or the pennies they paid al-Jazeera to spread the news?!

To me it looks like the position of al-Qaeda has gotten so bad after the heavy blows it received at the hands of our liberators in the MNF and our brave brothers in our army and the patriots who rejected al-Qaeda and its agenda.

I think this was what forced those losers to make this meaningless announcement of a fake state. It reflects the undeniable desperation and the abandoning of their original ambitions, from a victory that drives away the Americans and the Iraqis who believed in the change to a pathetic maneuver such as this one.

But we are still here, at least the majority of us are,
Our liberators and allies are still here,
The voters are still here and the elected are still here.

The al-Qaeda is left with nothing but to fantasize about creating a caliph state as long as they still have a foothold in the country and hope that some locals would change their mind and side with them.

"Our liberators and allies are still here".

Let's keep it like that as long as they need us.

Speaking Freely

Over at Spiked, Dolan Cummings, co-convenor of the Battle of Ideas, makes his (excellent) case for freedom of speech.

...to argue for free speech is to make the case for free-thinking, reasoned debate and genuine tolerance. It is also to put forward a particular understanding of how society functions and the role of individual and collective agency, which is very different from the fearful and conservative worldview that gives birth to censorship and taboos. Instead, it is a worldview that allows for the possibility that things could be very different, and that human beings could be the authors of our own destinies. Rather than seeing change as a threat and seeking to contain discord, we can talk openly about the future, exchange ideas and argue over them rather than trying to suppress those that make us uncomfortable.

Freedom of speech is not merely a means to an end, then, or a rhetorical trick. It is an invitation to live a free life.

iPod virus shock

I don't normally post here on technical things, but it seems a small percentage of Apple iPods shipped carrying a Windows virus, RavMonE.exe (previously unknown, but probably a variant of the W32/RJump family)

Black Death

The Times interviews a former member of the janjaweed milita from Sudan.

Dily, a Sudanese Arab, recounts how for three years he and his fellow Janjawid charged the farming villages of Darfur on their camels and horses, raking the huts with gunfire and shouting: “Kill the slaves. Kill the slaves.”

He reckons he attacked about 30 villages in all, and cannot count the people he shot. The villages were invariably destroyed, he says. The homes were burnt to the ground and the men, women and children killed — sometimes with the help of government airstrikes. If there were survivors “they would be left there . . . They couldn’t get help. Sometimes they made it to camps but mostly they died of thirst or starvation”.

While Newsnight reported that:

we have a world exclusive interview with a former member of the Janjaweed who was involved in raids that massacred thousands of civilians.

He claims he was acting on orders from the Sudanese Government.

The Times also reports from Darfur on the state of the African Union peacekeeping force:

“They are seen as Keystone cops, nothing more than a token force designed to show Africa is taking the crisis seriously when everyone knows it is not. It is disgraceful to think people’s lives depend on such a force,” an aid worker recently told The Times.

Senior officers say they have orders to report violations, not to intervene. “If there is fighting going on, we could get harmed . . . That is against the mandate,” Major Namara Gabriel, a Ugandan, declared.

Last year, Thabo Mbeki spoke to the National Assembly of Sudan:

...our shared colonial past left both of us with a common and terrible legacy of countries deeply divided on the basis of race, colour, culture and religion.
...
As of yesterday, Sudan has a Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The protracted and destructive war in the South has come to an end, never to return. It is also our firm view that that Peace Agreement and the new Sudan that will be born as a result of its implementation, provide a firm basis for the solution of other conflicts in Sudan, including the conflict in Darfur.

Today, I visited El Fasher in the Darfur region and have witnessed the challenges facing the government and people of Sudan in the area. I am confident that working together with the AU the leadership of this country will fully resolve the situation.

While George Galloway offers his analysis:

it is right that the remit of the African Union peacekeepers has been extended to the end of the year.

It provides a space to negotiate a peace, just as a peace was negotiated over the conflict in the south of Sudan.

But there are pro-imperialist forces that are seeking to prevent such a peace. They are the same forces that undermined the African Union mission. They want peace and the African peacekeepers to fail because they want a Western force in Sudan.

There are two reasons for this. First, it is about rehabilitating the discredited doctrine of humanitarian imperialism. Afghanistan was meant to be the great showcase for that. Look at it now. With every disaster in Afghanistan, Blair in particular is more and more desperate to find another benighted people he can liberate with daisy cutters and cluster bombs.

The second reason is that Sudan has oil reserves which might turn out to be among the largest in the world. It is a vast country.

We are being reminded by various cruise-missile liberals that its borders were created by colonial administrators. The subtext is clear - it is not a legitimate state, it's a state we can feel free to bomb, as Bill Clinton did in 1998, wiping out half the country's pharmaceutical capacity.

In the name of suffering black people, Bush and the neocons have their eyes on Sudan's black gold.

Peter Tatchell in Tribune (not online) has a better analysis:

To date, between 200,000 and 400,000 people in Darfur have been killed and two million others displaced. Three million Darfurians now live a knife-edge existence, with many dependent on international aid for their survival.

The genocide in Darfur is not separate from the many other conflicts and brutalities in Sudan. It is one aspect of Khartoum’s generalised oppression of all Sudanese people.

Sudan is ruled by a harsh Islamist dictatorship. Human rights abuses are widespread. This is the elephant in the room that most people ignore when they discuss Darfur.

The mass murder of black Africans in Darfur is directly related to the fact that the government of Sudan is an Arab-dominated Islamist dictatorship.
...
The Darfur killing fields are a litmus test of the UN’s willingness to enforce international law and challenge murderous regimes. So far, the UN has failed the test. It has allowed the killing to continue. The signal to tyrants everywhere is that they can get away with mass murder. On this form, there will be many more Darfurs in the future.
...
Calling for UN action to save lives in Darfur isn’t neo-imperialism, as some on the left allege. It is international solidarity to secure justice - the liberation of the oppressed - in the same tradition as the global movements against apartheid South Africa. Doing nothing, which is what sections of left would prefer, is collision with the oppressors in Khartoum. How can it be right for the supposedly ‘anti-imperialist left’ to leave black Africans to die in their hundreds of thousands?

We know the fascist left is drawn inexorably to support every murderous tyranny in the world, but the left is not the only problem.

While African leaders like Mbeki have just one analytical tool - the lens of post-colonial solidarity - the suffering in Darfur, Zimbabwe and other parts of the continent of Africa will continue.

This is not just a failure of the U.N., it is a failure of African leadership.

Acknowledgement to Harry's Place.

News Roundup

Headlines this morning from The Times.

Scientists say that a complete ban on cod fishing is the only way to save the species in the North Sea, after the complete failure of the European Union's fishing policy.

Meanwhile, the E.U. is moving to ban standby settings on televisions and DVD players.

UPDATE: Instead of just making fun of the E.U., Tim Worstall has something useful to say on the subject of fishing.

Papal Daze

In the Pope's recent, controversial speech, he said, inter alia:

A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

I think that's flying in the face of experience.

We have a global, rationalist, humanist culture that includes science that is not riven by violent misunderstanding. People might disagree about why the dinosaurs died out, or whether string theory is science - and these can be serious disputes about the work of lifetimes - but nobody beheads, and nobody has ever burned, anyone because they disagreed about such issues.

The dialogue of rational, sceptical people transcends all boundaries and unites us all. Through that unification, we explore each other's cultures with interest and enthusiasm.

Where a comment should be a post

This is an interesting point. Has American pressure got anything to do with the Labour Party's recent change of direction on Islamism?

Here's one reason to think this might be an issue, from the C.I.A.'s website - a U.S. national Intelligence Council document. Quote:

A New Caliphate provides an example of how a global movement fueled by radical religious identity politics could constitute a challenge to Western norms and values as the foundation of the global system.

Hat tip - Sir Percy.

Where tyrants kill, there's a Galloway

Islamist totalitarians butchering more than three million people, in the south and now in Darfur... What took him so long?

P.S. - It's about to get worse.

Leonine

One prominent supporter of the Rally for Free Expression was the humanist Leo Igwe, from Nigeria. I said at the time that he should stand as a reminder that there are people in the world who are fighting for freedom under far more trying circumstances than our own, in Europe.

A reminder of this comes today, in the news that a Nigerian Christian teacher who had the temerity to discipline a Muslim student first had to flee for his life, and is now under arrest, charged with blasphemy.

Leo and Joshua Lai (the teacher) deserve our admiration and our support. Geography and nationality do not outweigh our bonds of common humanity.

Free Speech isn't limited to people you agree with

There is a very worrying trend in the U.S.A. where two speakers (Carmen Callil and Tony Judt) have recently had appearances cancelled following pressure from Jewish lobby groups. For convenience, both cases can be read about at this single link.

Arguing for freedom of speech for those with whom you agree is meaningless. Of course none of us want our own opinions supressed. It only carries any weight at all when extended to include those with whom you disagree. That's why the supporters of the March Rally for Free Expression were the genuine article. Speakers disgreed strongly with each other on almost everything except the importance of being able to disagree in a peaceful environment, where nobody gets sent to prison, threatened or killed for their opinions or utterances ESPECIALLY when they are offensive. It's not an issue when people's views are not offensive to someone.

That's also why the equivocal waffling of organisations like Amnesty International over the Danish Cartoons affair was so degraded. Yes, we must have free speech, they said, but we must use it "responsibly", which is to say not at all if someone known to be violent might take exception.

Sorry. Free speech is an absolute. And that applies to Carmen Callil, Tony Judt, George Galloway, the American Minutemen, my old friend Ismaeel and David Irving. It applies to Mother Theresa, the Pope and the Mufti of Jerusalem.

It applies to everyone.

In a climate wherein anti-semitic comment has swept through the halls of academia, and anti-Israeli sentiment is the rule at the BBC, Reuters, AFP, The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times and other media organisations, the Anti Defamation League should know well what the problem with the suppression of opinions and news is, and they should be ashamed of their recent conduct.

Why Now?

Dennis MacShane, writing in today's Telegraph:

At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.

This is not confined to the labour Party, but it is most obvious there, with Ruth Kelly leading the charge. The idea that Jack Straw would have published his thoughts on the veil without reference to his party and then held his breath is not credible.

In their recent letter to Ruth Kelly, the Muslim Council of Britain said:

In recent months there has been a veritable regular drip-feed of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community. We have seen ministers' tours and even legislation being proposed on the premise that 'mosques are a problem'. We have been told to accept that greater numbers of Muslims will be stopped and searched and also to 'inform' on our children. This relentless barrage has been disheartening and you will understand our worry about where all this is leading. Some Muslims have even sought the MCB's advice on whether they should change their names in order to avoid anti-Muslim remarks. This is what happens when a community is singled out by those at the helm of affairs.

The MCB is right about this.

The consequences of giving preferential treatment to extremists like the MCB for a decade, of deferring to the real or imagined sensitivities of a small section of the population, and thereby causing genuine resentment, dislike and even hatred of all Muslims generally within society, then reversing the position and releasing a constant stream of remarks, initiatives and policy changes that feed this cultivated dislike could be horrendous.

Why are Labour doing this? It must be a deliberate policy. I can see no other explanation than that their private polling has revealed a serious threat to their position with the bedrock of their support, the white working class. Having caused the problem, by favouring Muslim extremists to the great personal cost especially of moderate Muslims in the country who have had to endure a surge of religious conservatism, veilings, forced marriage, curtailed female education, lost voting rights for the weakest (especially women) and "honour" violence, they are now reversing the position, also to the potential great cost of moderate Mulsims in this country.

The problems we now face that are associated with supremacist, absolutist, "fundamentalist", fascistic Islamism are entirely the fault of the governing and media elites in western countries, and in this country mainly of the liberal and Labour left. All religions have conservatives and extremists; the great thing is to avoid giving them undue, or even any, influence in society. From the government's contacts with the MCB to the BBC's "Prophet Mohammed" bullshit, this problem has been caused not by the Muslims who are trying to get on with their lives, but by those whose unconscious, automatic racism finds it appropriate to treat all minorities as "communities" with strange and unique properties, lacking the common humanity that should bind us into one great community.

Let's remember, though, that Michael Howard set the ball rolling for recognition of the MCB - who are now so conspicuously worried that the gravy train is about to resume its journey without them.

This is a mark of the collective failure of the entire British establishment. Members of the awkward squad might soon find themselves moving from attacking radical Islam to defending ordinary Muslims. This sort of reversal happens: Libertarians have found themselves moving from having to defend homosexuals against discrimination to having to defend the right of homophobic bigots to free speech.

The best stance to take is very simple indeed. It's better to have free speech and have to listen to idiocy from time to time than to have censorship. Religion should be an entirely private matter but the right of people to follow their religion, or lack of it, privately must be defended. Free markets suck and on humanitarian grounds need safety nets but they have the merit of being the only economic system that works. In a democratic system, the only thing a community leader can do is weaken the democratic basis of society. You can't participate in society if you don't speak the language. There is no humane alternative to integration but integration is not homogeneity.And so on.

Above all, we share a common humanity that binds us and transcends any and every difference of race, sex, religion, sexuality or opinion.

We need to focus the spotlight where it belongs, on the people who have caused these problems, on the political and media elites and the civil service. We need to shine it on those who supported the "at-least-he's-our-son-of-a-bitch" tyrants abroad, raised up community leaders at home, turned a blind eye to terrorists planning outrages so long as the outrages were to be committed elsewhere, who distorted media coverage to suit their political prejudices.

We should not let the focus turn to ordinary Muslims. Not even to extremist Muslims, who would never have gained the prominence they have without the sins of the establishment.

And that establishment includes Dennis MacShane.

Sharp Axes

From the MCB letter quoted in an earlier post:

We know that there are a clique of Islamophobic journalists (including Nick Cohen, Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright and John Ware), each with a sharp axe to grind, who have desperately and repeatedly tried to malign the MCB and other important Muslim institutions.

That's a lovely thought: Nick Cohen (Euston Manifesto Decent Left) and Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail Strident Right), Martin Bright (New Statesman Unreconstructed Socialist) and Michael Gove (Libertarian Tendency Tory MP) forging "closer and more lasting friendships" and "sharing a sense of belonging". Perhaps that's why their axes are so sharp.

Popal Haze

I was involved in three radio debates and phone-ins about the Pope's recent speech, in which he quoted a Byzantine Emperor to the annoyance of some of the world's Muslims. This means I actually read the speech in full. It's interesting that the main challenge he presented to Islam was never confronted or commented on. Early on in his speech, just after the controversial bit, he said:

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

To paraphrase, the Christian view of God is bound up intrinsically with rationality, the Muslim view of God is disconnected from rationality. Is the Christian view correct always?

Or, in other words, are Muslims in error with their view of God? He thinks they are. That's unsurprising: the Pope is, after all, a Catholic. And this is from his closing remarks:

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

Subtle phrasing doesn't disguise the import of this - he is inviting Muslims to "this breadth of reason", to the Christian view of God.

The Pope was suggesting that Muslims should become Christians, abandon their view of a "transcendental" God and embrace the Christian God of "logos" - reason, and the word.

This is much more challenging and controversial than the quote from the ancient Emperor. There can have been no shortage of perceptive Muslim readers of this speech. So what are we to make of their reaction?

To be simplistic about it, does perpetual outrage make you stupid, or is perpetual outrage a device to avoid debate, and bully your opponent? In a more reflective period, there might have been a reaction along the lines of "Don't try to convert me, meet me as an equal". That didn't happen. I think it's the latter of my two simple alternatives.

The Pope spoke on a Tuesday. The fuss really kicked off on the following Friday, following the weekly prayer/kill-all-the-infidels sermon-fest. The fuss was contrived. It was political in inception and in intention. And the purpose of this political outrage is the intimidation of non-Muslims. There was a debate to be had, but it was ignored.

There was also an alliance on offer, an alliance against the secular world. Also from his speech:

In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.

It's not surprising that he is emphasising the Christian faith, given his position, but the money quote in that section is:

listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.

He was trying to say that rationality - the whole edifice of technology, science, empiricism, cannot be divorced from religion; that to try to divorce it is "unacceptable". It is true that he couched this in terms of Christian theology, but the whole point of any theology is to reconcile the absurd with the self-evident, to reconcile obviously incorrect tradition with the observed and experienced world. Muslims can do that too.

If the Muslim world does ever manage to see beyond its habit of taking offense, and posturing, and ally itself with this brand of Catholicism, there will be a profound challenge to secularism.

That's why even if the outrage was deliberate and political, it wa still stupid and self-defeating. It's also why secular, humanist, rationalist, enlightened people of the world have to remember that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, and the Pope is an enemy of that reformed, enlightened tradition, even if he is a target for Islamists at the moment.

What's really strange is that, in the search for temporary, tactical alliances, the Islamists have gone for the fascist left - a traditionally atheistic movement that has fellow-travelled with a lot of causes - gay rights, feminism - that conflict directly and absolutely with their values. Maybe that's the really stupid decision, to take the convenient, offered alliance rather than one - with the world's conservative religious movements - that would have had genuine mileage in it.

For that, moderate secularists can be thankful. Religious supremacism has occluded tactical thinking and they have teamed up with a bunch of people who think that nude bicycle rides will affect the political landscape.

Maybe they are stupid after all.

MCB amazed and concerned

...about losing their government funding.

Talk Veritas has obtained a letter written by Mohammed Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain to Ruth Kelly, and cc'd to all the main party leaders. The whole thing can be read here.

A couple of excerpts:

g) We have noted your decision on funding and engagement with some amazement and deep concern. It appears clear to us that the publicly announced 'shift' in your policy regarding funding is arguably unlawful.

The indication that only those organisations that agree with your particular strategy as the best way to fight extremism will receive your favours is another way of saying that only those who support your government can expect to receive public funds. Access to public funds should not and cannot be dependent on such considerations as on who is and who is not attending the Holocaust Memorial Day.

As a responsible representative organisation the MCB has a duty to represent and reflect the views of its constituents fairly and if those views are unpalatable to the government of the day, so be it. The legal framework and traditions of our country do not allow the government to be vindictive or punitive in the use of public funds.

...

We know that there are a clique of Islamophobic journalists (including Nick Cohen, Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright and John Ware), each with a sharp axe to grind, who have desperately and repeatedly tried to malign the MCB and other important Muslim institutions.

...

h) It is, of course, right that the government seeks to speak to a wide range of Muslim organisations and individuals. It would be wise to distinguish the mainstream, democratically-constituted Muslim bodies from the mavericks.

However, for your department to foster and promote new sectarian Muslim bodies with barely concealed links to US neo-cons is bound to raise justifiable concerns about your department's true intentions.

...

You cannot expect to succeed by engaging in a merry go round to find Muslims who agree with you. Surely, you can best succeed if you work with and take on board the views of those Muslim organisations that are rooted in the community and who have a track record of delivery.

...

i) Secretary of State, we would not be true to the real feeling within the Muslims of Britain if we did not raise one final and important point.

In recent months there has been a veritable regular drip-feed of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community. We have seen ministers' tours and even legislation being proposed on the premise that 'mosques are a problem'. We have been told to accept that greater numbers of Muslims will be stopped and searched and also to 'inform' on our children.

This relentless barrage has been disheartening and you will understand our worry about where all this is leading. Some Muslims have even sought the MCB's advice on whether they should change their names in order to avoid anti-Muslim remarks. This is what happens when a community is singled out by those at the helm of affairs.

This is a great diversion from the many other real social challenges facing all of us in Britain - of caring for our infirm and elderly, strengthening the family and giving a sense of purpose to the young. Our nation deserves a strategy to move forward - what we have been receiving instead from our leaders are hastily formulated responses masquerading as policy.

...

Finally, in view of your public remarks, please note that we shall be sending a copy of this letter to all mosques and local, regional and national Muslim organisations across the country, including, of course, those affiliated with the Muslim Council of Britain.


Yours sincerely, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari Secretary General

CC: Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP, PC Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, MP Leader of the House of Commons, Rt. Hon. Jack Straw, MP Home Secretary, Rt. Hon. Dr John Reid, MP Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition, Rt. Hon. David Cameron, MP Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Dr Menzies Campbell, MP

Jamais vu

Stoppers have a limited palette: Vietnam, Stalingrad and one battle in Afghanistan. Every military action undertaken by the US and her allies now has to be compared to one or other of these events rather than, say, Sierra Leone.

There is actually no obvious historical analogy to contemporary Afghanistan. Saying "Hi, we're your friends, we're just going to burn your livelihood" would never have worked well at any time, anywhere on earth.

Iraq does have an obvious parallel, but it doesn't seem to have been made much. A state that is basically a post-war conglomerate of several different ethnic and religious regions, collapsing into appalling violence after the removal of a strongman? The former Yugoslavia springs to mind.

Buy the damn opium from the Pashtun farmers, and expedite the break-up of Iraq into its natural constituents.

Why John?

I was recently asked why I called this blog Freeborn John.

The Wikipedia entry is a good start, and here's a quote from it:

John Lilburne then began in earnest his campaign of agitation for freeborn rights, the rights that all Englishmen are born with, which are different from privileges bestowed by a monarch or a government. His enemies branded him as a Leveller but Lilburne responded that he was a "Leveller so-called." To him it was a pejorative label which he did not like. He called his supporters "Agitators." It was feared that "Levellers" wanted to level property rights, but Lilburne wanted to level human basic rights which he called "freeborn rights."

Lancelittle

A Muslim blogger writes about a Muslim victim of a Muslim bomber.

If we don't help the blogger, and his hero, what kind of people are we?

Answer: editors of The Lancet.

An Explanation

A good rule of thumb with blog posts is that the more frequently the word "I" appears, the worse the post is. On that basis, it might be best to click away now. This post is about my reasons for dropping out of sight after the rally for free expression last March, so the use of the first person is hard to avoid. Even so, I reckon that if I'm going to tell the story I might as well tell the whole story. So interminable length provides even more reason to turn to the TV listings.

I have been featured in the media twice before. The first time, in 1983/4, was when I broke the Opticians' Monopoly, as a consequence of which you can now buy reading glasses without prescription, for a reasonable price, in a chemist's shop. I'm very proud of that, and anyone interested could dig out more details of what Kenneth Clarke in the House of Commons called "The Risdon Affair" (Hansard, 1983, November I think, not online) if they care to. This post is not about that episode. I'd be happy to blog about it some other time, but it isn't a problem.

The other occasion is, and in March I took a chance with it. Strangely enough, the internet age has made the preceding period in some ways more opaque. Whereas in 1989 a journalist would have gone to the cuttings library and discovered all sorts of interesting things, today they google and some events prior to 1990, give or take a year, are hidden to them.

A rather difficult personal issue in 1985/6 saw me disappear into the underbelly of Glasgow, emerge driving a minicab at night in Peckham, S.E. London, then reappear, with a surprising number of extremely colourful acquaintances, working for a spy equipment shop in Mayfair. I left and set up my own "security" business in the Borough, just south of London Bridge, in partnership with an ex-armed robber called Tom.

You can probably picture the next couple of years: bug sweeps, body armour, unofficial meetings with the Foreign Office, ex-SAS soldiers, hidden video cameras... and there were less predictable things, not least a 325 carat rough diamond spirited from South Africa to London for me to sell, and get arrested while trying to get it out of a bank's safekeeping impersonating the depositor, with a fake passport and a faxed sheet of his signatures in my pocket (I was charged over this but the case was thrown out by the judge at half-time, no case to answer, the owner had asked me to get it to show to a buyer from one of London's biggest auction houses because he couldn't get back to the UK in time).

I rather liked the excitement, the boozy meetings with Gulf Arabs in Park Lane, the cleaning lady who found a bug when it dropped off the bottom of a chair in the boardroom of one of the UK's biggest companies, the security director of another FTSE100 company who discovered a plant was bugged when his car FM radio started broadcasting a meeting as he looked for a parking space...

One week, a couple of years later, I went on holiday to Morocco for a week, on the outbound leg stopping off at the Heathrow Hilton for a two hour meeting with Robert De Niro, who was researching his character for a forthcoming film, then on my return driving straight from the airport to CIB2's headquarters in Vauxhall to be interviewed about a police officer I had gently persuaded to drop his attempt to get a £40,000 bribe from someone. A mutual friend had asked me to help "straighten out" the problem, I had done so quietly but a third party had told the police.

The film De Niro was researching is called The Score and, it might just be coincidence, if you know what it's about, but the main theme of my contribution was, don't get involved in other people's plans. I had done exactly that, to my cost.

One of my customers at the security company was called Darius Guppy who, because he had been Earl Spencer's best man (then he was called Charles Althorpe), and because Spencer's sister was Princess Diana - and because there was a sense that Guppy might not be entirely wholesome - was in the eye of the press. Guppy had latched on to me, and was quite funny in his way. He wanted to keep a low profile, so when he telephoned my office, he'd say his name was Harry. Whoever answered the phone would put him on hold, then buzz me and say "Guppy's on the line". Then Tom would pretend to be a fish, trying to make me laugh as I spoke to him. I had found a manufacturer who would make false-bottomed flight cases when Guppy asked - after an abortive attempt to make them myself (I'm not a craftsman). He had told me he was trying to move some of his "wealth" out of the country to avoid capital gains tax. Whatever. I wasn't troubled by his motives. I had taken my morality off the hook: engaged tone, please try again later.

Then he came to me with another tax problem. I already knew he liked to travel to places like India and Colombia with a suitcase of cash, buying gemstones for his public company, Inca Gemstones Plc. He told me he had hired a consultant in Colombia and paid them in gems. This might have been a tax offence in Colombia but wasn't an issue anywhere else. However, it had been off the books, had left him with a shortfall of stock, and there was an audit due...

So he had a plan. A cunning plan.

He would be robbed, in New York where a small robbery would pass almost unnoticed. This was pre-Giuliani and there was a lot of crime in Gotham City. And we were only talking about thousands. Nada.

So I agreed. For £10,000 I flew to N.Y., went down to Philadelphia where I had a connection, bought a gun, drove back to N.Y., went to Guppy's hotel room, tied up him and his partner, Benedict Marsh, fired a shot into the bed to make it look real, and left. I drove upstate and threw the gun into a lake, then flew back a day later... To be met by my girlfriend, who was holding a press cutting. There had been a £1.2 million pound robbery in New York...

Exaggeration, said Guppy. You know the press. It'll all blow over. But there was a potential problem. I might have been seen. It would be best if I shaved off my moustache (my guilty secret... I had a moustache...). I declined, though now I realise he was talking sense. But in fact, as it turned out, this wasn't just fashion advice.

I grew increasingly suspicious of Guppy in the following months. I didn't buy this exaggeration line, though it did seem that it had all blown over. Then people started coming to me, telling me that Guppy was trying to isolate me, turn people against me. So I put him under surveillance. I bugged his house and his phone.

We hadn't completely fallen out yet, and he was arrogant enough to think I wouldn't be proactive about things, so since he had become slightly paranoid, he asked me to sweep his house for bugs. Unfortunately, my team didn't find anything.

But I did find a lot in my tapes of his conversations. His gold smuggling had gone wrong, and three shipments had been found by the Indian customs. The robbery in N.Y. had actually been an insurance scam, and he had sold some of his allegedly stolen stock back to the dealer who had sold it to him in the first place. The dealer had become suspicious and told the police. The eagles were circling...

Luckily, for him, he had a fallback plan. He had given the N.Y. police my description, from which they had produced an artist's impression of me - without a moustache. That was why he had asked me to shave. His plan was to say he had really been robbed by a slight acquaintance to whom he had mentioned the N.Y trip but who he didn't know well enough to recognise without his moustache. Yes, his fallback plan was to frame me for robbing him, to disappear to another country while I was arrested and convicted, then reappear a few years later when there had already been a conviction and the appetite to investigate him would meet with budgetary obstacles.

That was a difficult situation. I decided on maximum retaliation. Not only did I go to the police and tell them what had happened, I also sold the News Of The World one of the tapes I had made, on which Guppy could be heard discussing a plan to beat up a Screws journalist. The tape, which subsequently was serialised by the Guardian Diary and splashed by The Daily Mail, included conversations between Guppy and the prospective assailants, and also with a journalist Guppy knew at Oxford, who had a line on the home address of the target. The journalist was called Boris Johnson.

Johnson has taken enough stick for this, by the way, not least on Have I Got News For You. If I had known what he would become, I'd never have released the tape. I regret doing so, regret the problem it caused him and assert that it's water under the bridge and one of our few decent and honest politicians should be untroubled by this episode.

Anyway, it all made the papers in a massive way. I spent three days in the witness box, some 60 additional prosecution witnesses came forward, and Guppy was convicted. And I was roasted. I was a grass. I had given evidence to save my skin from the earlier false passport charge that had been thrown out without my even having to enter a defense. It was a horrible time, though I felt that I had not played a role that was exactly glorious so I slunk away, and didn't sue for libel, not when his "contemptible book" (Lyn Barber, the Observer) was published, and not when they made two TV movies about the affair, all of which took Guppy's line at face value. To be clear, the line of a self-confessed purjerer who was trying to position himself as well as possible for his next crime (he was busted by the Sunday Mirror as soon as he was released from prison, when he met a well known "face" in Chelsea, planning a video counterfeiting scam). Of course he couldn't admit he had deceived me, then tried to frame me. Who would work with him then?

So.

So what.

The press weren't interested in what actually happened, they were interested in a story. And the story wasn't me, so who gives a shit?

This was nearly twenty years ago. 1989, to be exact. I knew it would muddy the waters for the free expression rally if it came out, but I decided partly to gamble on it not doing so, and partly just to do it anyway. Nobody else was. Let's be clear about this. I have a quiet life. Nobody knows about it. I am responsible for people's IT security, among other things. This coming out again now could lose me business, lose me my business, lose me my house... it could be a bloody mess.

And there's another thing. I'm ashamed of it. It was a disgraceful thing to do. I'd prefer to leave it in the past.

After the rally we talked about forming an organisation to campaign for free expression. A one-off rally is one thing, a movement is another. I couldn't possibly be involved without coming clean, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. Oddly enough, the death threats I received in the build up to the rally were neither here nor there, I expected them and I've been threatened, followed, approached, attempts have been made to intimidate me before; but this was an ogre, a dark cloud above me and when the rally finished, I was ill, for a couple of weeks.

And I went quiet. If I had said anything, I'd have given the game away. I wanted to keep the option of silence, of a quiet life. I actually resented the fact that I had to organise the rally in the first place. I give money to Amnesty International... I vote... there are people who should have been doing it instead of me... but they didn't. I felt I was the last person who should have been organising the rally, and I felt that was exactly the position I found myself in.

So there we are.

I completely understand if people who have been supportive before now feel they want to withdraw that support.

But I also feel that there is a lot to do. I want to do some of it.

And I also have a cunning plan...