Geert Wilders banned from UK

[Rob]

UK banned Geert Wilders from entering. Obviously Lord Ahmed got his way:

Trouble lays ahead as Lord threatens 10,000 muslims to blockade Parliament (http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2009/2/3/4079210.html)

I am not sure, but this might well be the first time that a parlement member from a friendly EU nation is banned from another EU country. Or are there others cases?

Official reaction from the Dutch government: "This is sad"

[varian]

There's better skiing in Geert's area of the EU anyway. :p

[Y. Shulamith]

Ho hum.......what's next??? A day of outrage or a day of wrath, I forget which comes first??? What doesn't offend the "sensibilities of the muzzies?

Guess not....

[Y. Shulamith]

UK banned Geert Wilders from entering. Obviously Lord Ahmed got his way:

Trouble lays ahead as Lord threatens 10,000 muslims to blockade Parliament (http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2009/2/3/4079210.html)

I am not sure, but this might well be the first time that a parlement member from a friendly EU nation is banned from another EU country. Or are there others cases?

Official reaction from the Dutch government: "This is sad"

He's been done a favor by not going there; no telling what the "natives" might have tried.

[Sharona]

Rob - unless there has been yet another about-face in this story, the decision to ban Wilders from visiting the House of Lords has since been overturned.

Initially, Lord (though I hestitate to give him this title) Ahmed's threats appeared to find support, but a few days later the invitation was apparently re-issued.

We will have to wait and see what transpires!

[Rob]

Rob - unless there has been yet another about-face in this story, the decision to ban Wilders from visiting the House of Lords has since been overturned.

Initially, Lord (though I hestitate to give him this title) Ahmed's threats appeared to find support, but a few days later the invitation was apparently re-issued.

We will have to wait and see what transpires!

Today the ban was made official. I know, this went back and forth, but todays decision was the last development and seems final. Geert Wilders is not banned from visiting the House of Lords, but from the entire UK. Geert Wilders´reaction today was he will fly to London and see what happens.

Source: Dutch media and official statements from the Dutch government.

[Steven]

How pathetic. They might as well just surrender already. (The govt).

[Sharona]

Thanks Rob - I'll keep an eye on this one!:)

But why has Wilders been banned from the UK when the likes of Abu Hamza and heaven knows how many radical clerics are allowed in?

This defies all logic and should be taken as a rather sinister move.

[Steven]

Thanks Rob - I'll keep an eye on this one!:)

But why has Wilders been banned from the UK when the likes of Abu Hamza and heaven knows how many radical clerics are allowed in?

This defies all logic and should be taken as a rather sinister move.

The answer is because the UK is being run by a bunch of cowards.

[kozzol]

But why has Wilders been banned from the UK when the likes of Abu Hamza and heaven knows how many radical clerics are allowed in?

Because our politicians are a bunch of di.ks??

[Rob]

How pathetic. They might as well just surrender already. (The govt).

Guess people like this are not born anymore:


we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hill, we shall never surrender

Now it seems a competition in Europe who will receive the dhimmie award of 2009.

[andak01]

Thanks Rob - I'll keep an eye on this one!

But why has Wilders been banned from the UK when the likes of Abu Hamza and heaven knows how many radical clerics are allowed in?

Let me get you up to speed. Abu Hamza was kicked out of his mosque, arrested and will be extradicted to the US on terrorism charges which could carry the death penalty. This guy isn't walking around free. There is no comparison to Wilders on any level.

[Steven]

Let me get you up to speed. Abu Hamza was kicked out of his mosque, arrested and will be extradicted to the US on terrorism charges which could carry the death penalty. This guy isn't walking around free. There is no comparison to Wilders on any level.

Let me get you up to speed. We all know that that there are Muslims there openly preaching hatred towards non-Muslims there. Save the daily bs for someone else.:tdown:

[kozzol]

Let me get you up to speed. Abu Hamza was kicked out of his mosque, arrested and will be extradicted to the US on terrorism charges which could carry the death penalty. This guy isn't walking around free. There is no comparison to Wilders on any level.

First time I will agree with you and probably the only time, there is no comparison Geert Wilders speaks the truth about moslems and Abu Hamza does not about christians and Jews.

[Steven]

First time I will agree with you and probably the only time, there is no comparison Geert Wilders speaks the truth about moslems and Abu Hamza does not about christians and Jews.

:rofl:

[Anatolia]

Good.I would ban all racists from the world.Some people waste the air we breath... so..

[Anatolia]

Thanks Rob - I'll keep an eye on this one!:)

But why has Wilders been banned from the UK when the likes of Abu Hamza and heaven knows how many radical clerics are allowed in?

This defies all logic and should be taken as a rather sinister move.

I don't know who is Abu Hamza and don't really care, but I would ban all islamofascists too.

[Steven]

Good.I would ban all racists from the world.Some people waste the air we breath... so..

What race is Islam? According to your logic we can ban all of Islam and its followers. Bye bye.

[AlanSilver]

another day another tory of how my country is becoming a muslim state...

read this...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138701/Foster-parent-looked-80-children-struck--Muslim-girl-care-Christian.html

and this

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/4039360.Worshippers__fury_over_parking_tickets/?action=complain&cid=7441713

[Mediocrates]

It's hard struggle to tease out free speech from inciteful speech, isn't it? In an open society you have the right to be mightily offended by the thoughts words and deeds of others. They do no have the right to threaten you. Where that distinction is, is always hard to make. Wilders case is one such example.

In Germany recently however, the courts determined that Nazi hate speech was legal in the exact circumstances where a movie was viewed, for an entrance fee, to a private audience who were members of a group who espoused that belief while the film was closed to all others.

Wilders case is somewhat close to that. It's a movie you have no probability of accidentally stumbling across, it would have to be viewed in a scenario where you had to have some understanding of what it is about before you saw it, plausibly some ticket price could or would be charged.

And like it or not, you don't have the right to demand the force and will of the state be employed to ensure that you personally are never offended. Is it inciteful speech? I don't know, they have to decide that. To me the test case would be in comparison to THAT. Could you make a movie that disparaged black people or the handicapped or gays and would it be similarly banned? I depends - In Israel it would probably be banned because it would indeed be inciteful. In Holland? I don't know. The public good of freedom has to be weighed against the likelihood of violence.

In the US, the generic group "Muslims" is not a protected class minority. Neither is "Jews". The ACLU would fight for their right to show Wilders movie as hard as they fought for the right of the Nazis to march in Skokie years ago in that famous case. But that's probably because the old people in Skokie, so many of whom were Holocaust survivors (which is specifically why the Nazis chose that spot) were too old to bash the the Nazis in the street.

[Rob]

Can somebody please explain to me why fitna is considered to incite hate. It shows examples of violent sentences of the Quran and shows a relation with 9/11, 7/7 and Madrid. Is this far fetched? No, because the Jihadists implementing these attacks use the same texts.

All he asks from Muslims in the end of the video is to disregard the violent words of the Quran and be peacefull. Seriously, what is wrong with that?????

He is not threatening anybody!

[kozzol]

Because he has spoken out against Islam, he is a racist and bigot, plus he is white and a christian.

I can feel a fatwa coming on :rofl:

[varian]

Do you get the idea that there is a method to all this madness???

http://perfectlyhuman.multiply.com/video/item/8

[kozzol]

Cheers varian that about sums up everything I have believed in since I was a teenager and it is frightening.

[Sharona]

Andak - I don't create posts aimed to inflame anyone's sensibilities. That is not my way. When I post, I aim to be as accurate as possible - to distort truth serves no one.

Abu Hamza isn't exactly incarcerated. He is under house arrest and tagged. However, he is seen out in the street and appears to have a mobile phone at his disposal. Whether or not the phone is monitored I cannot say. I would actually be surprised if he is extradited. He's cost the British tax payer a small fortune thus far!

But Hamza is certainly not the only fundamentalist in the UK. There are others preaching hatred, Andak. From time to time you do get an undercover reporter revealing these men - and women. There are reliable sources writing about them. From time to time you do get the odd insight into what might be going on without our knowledge. The Western muslim teacher I mentioned in a previous post is a case in point. He left his job in a Saudi-funded school because of the content of some of the text books which depicted Jews and Christians as apes and pigs.

I am not sure how you feel the average UK citizen should view the Wilders/Ahmed case? We are aware of the preachers of hatred in our midst and their apparent ability to come and go as they please. We have seen scenes of violence with young men carrying banners with slogans such as 'Behead X' and 'Death to the West' or 'Europe - Bin Laden is coming'. I realise that not every muslim is marching in the street, Andak, and a decade ago these incidents were pretty much unheard of - but they are on the rise with every passing year - and it is extremely alarming to most Brits. Remember, we don't have a death penalty and our police have never been routinely armed. We aren't used to riots or threats. The country that I grew up in was very gentle.

I feel the alarm with Ahmed is not without reason. I have said in previous posts that the UK has all but bent in two to accommodate its muslim citizens. To the extent that it appears we must avoid Christmas or cards with crosses on or certain billboard posters or certain prayers/comments Armistice Day etc. etc. It honestly feels as if our culture is no longer valid. In part, this is the Government's fault for allowing things to reach this stage. The UK is a Christian country and it should be allowed to remain so. Instead, being Christian is almost politically incorrect.

The fact is, no other minority group makes so many demands nor do they get such enormous consideration - and this is a very unhealthy situation - for the moderate muslims, too.

Ahmed does them no favours. By threatening to rally 10,000 muslims, by declaring his success 'a victory for the muslim community', by saying he was going to take the Baroness who issued the invitation to court - what has Ahmed done to reassure Brits that Islam is just, fair and moderate? To the bloke on the street it honestly seems that we must tolerate the 'jihad'-type aims of some, the visits of Hizb ut-Tahrir in our local community (and yes, they have visited the area near me) but freedom of speech in Wilder's case is met with an instant threat and a ban from the UK.

I have watched Fitna - I didn't feel I could comment on it without seeing it. It actually doesn't depict anything I haven't seen before. None of it is new; some of it has been seen via undercover reporting. My understanding is that it was not intended to be on public release - although I would imagine it is now quite infamous due to the Dutch authorities and Ahmed.

I really, really wish moderate muslims would march against their extremist brothers. If I saw that, I would certainly feel easier. They need to speak up, Andak; if things carry on as they are, they, too will be adversely affected by the way things appear to be going.

[kozzol]

sharona :clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::c lap::clap::clap::

Maybe the moslems in the UK should reliase that now the lads are out in Iraq and Afghanistan they are getting a true picture of the hatred which exsist against not only jews but christains, but whats worst is more important against the people of Britain who are not moslems.

Hold tight because there is a tide coming in of pissed of youngsters who have seen how this backward religion preaches its hate and bigotry in these two countries and there will be a turning in the UK, just a matter of time.

[Rob]

Tomorrow (12th of Feb.) noon (local UK time) Geert Wilders will land at Heathrow accompanied with Dutch press. Could get interesting...

[Steven]

Tomorrow (12th of Feb.) noon (local UK time) Geert Wilders will land at Heathrow accompanied with Dutch press. Could get interesting...

Do you have a link Rob? Thanks for the update.

[Sharona]

Indeed, Rob.

I haven't watched the UK news today. I've reached the point where I am no longer sure to what extent it reflects the truth.

At the moment, Wilders appears to be a 'flashpoint' for the UK. Whether or not it will turn into a 'watershed' depends on the interpretation provided by the media.

In my view, Ahmed will share any responsibility for any adverse outcomes. He should have taken his case to the appropriate authorities and argued his corner. That would have been the most advantageous solution to muslim and non-muslim alike. Instead, he himself has threatened to disturb the security of the capital city by stating that he would rouse 10,000 muslims to march against Wilders and should therefore be held culpable. His threat to take the Baroness to court is also beyond the pale as is his statement in the Pakistani press that his success in preventing Wilders entry is a 'victory for the Muslim community'.

Is the man stark raving mad? His responsibility as a Lord of the realm is towards ALL communities. His voice is never heard - much less his threats to rouse 10,000 - when an Islamic preacher of hatred proposes a visit to the UK. Does he not realise that the manner in which he now rants is highly detrimental to the moderate muslim community and the perceptions of Islam for non-muslims? He might as well just start campaigning for the BNP.

I couldn't care less about 'Fitna' - it is nothing that hasn't been seen before or known about. What bothers me is the underlying bullying by Ahmed, the capitulation of the UK government and the way it may affect ALL communities.

The blogosphere is small, but today I've noticed voices from other countries calling for a boycott on British goods. Perhaps that might actually do some good.

[Rob]

Do you have a link Rob? Thanks for the update.

It hard to find articles in English about this, but I found one:

Will Geert Wilders Be Arrested at Heathrow? (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3793)

This includes the letter from the Secretary of State for the Home Department to Geert Wilders:


Dear Mr Wilders

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the Secretary of State is of the view that your presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society. The Secretary of State is satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK.

You are advised that should you travel to the UK and seek admission an Immigration Officer will take into account the Secretary of State's view. If, in accordance with regulation 21 of the immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006, the Immigration Officer is statisfied that your exclusion is justified on grounds of public policy and/or public security, you will be refused admission to the UK under regulation 19. You would have a right of appeal against any refusal of admission, exercisable from outside the UK.

Yours sincerely,

Irving N. Jones

[Sharona]

Steven - do you ever visit Melanie Phillips blog at the online version of the 'Spectator'? I realise it is 'blogosphere' and you can't extrapolate the views expressed onto the world at large, but you can find a few intelligent insights - even if you have to navigate the 'anti-everything' brigade first.:)

Melanie is a well-known British journalist, and a pretty terrifying woman to boot. She has no qualms whatsoever about speaking her mind, despite the opinions of the intelligentsia.

I would imagine she could run a government, quell wildcat strikes, win a war and strike fear into the hearts of her enemies - and still be home at 4pm in time for tea and cakes:lol:

[Aviva]

Steven - do you ever visit Melanie Phillips blog at the online version of the 'Spectator'? I realise it is 'blogosphere' and you can't extrapolate the views expressed onto the world at large, but you can find a few intelligent insights - even if you have to navigate the 'anti-everything' brigade first.:)

Melanie is a well-known British journalist, and a pretty terrifying woman to boot. She has no qualms whatsoever about speaking her mind, despite the opinions of the intelligentsia.

I would imagine she could run a government, quell wildcat strikes, win a war and strike fear into the hearts of her enemies - and still be home at 4pm in time for tea and cakes:lol:

I really like her too and think she's a very powerful journalist. She doesn't come across as well on TV though, as she doesn't have as strong a tele-friendly presence, which is a shame because she has so many valid points to make.

[Sharona]

I agree, Aviva.

I've seen her a few times on 'Question Time' - a program I used to watch but am now wary of since the Chair's apparent manipulation of a well-versed-on-Hamas member of the audience. But then, he's BBC, isn't he?

I've read two of her books. 'Londonistan' and 'All Must Have Prizes'. I admit I baulked a little over the title of the former, but she doesn't speculate; instead, she backs up all her view with referenced sources. The latter is an expose of 'Child-centred' learning. Having had a son go through the education system and be part of this 'child-centred' stuff, I found Melanie's opinions completely in line with my own.

In my view, she is an extremely down-to-earth woman. As sensible as one of those no-nonsense Headmistress-types I've had in my life.

What a pity she's not in the business of starting a political party, eh?:)

[Sharona]

Newly hiked from Cranmer's blog at:

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/

"Cranmer has received the following press statement from The Rt. Hon. Professor The Baroness Cox, of Queensbury, and Lord Pearson of Rannoch, joint sponsors of the screening of Fitna and the conference at the House of Lords entitled 'The Koran and Freedom of Speech':



"The Koran and Freedom of Speech"

Her Majesty's Government bans Geert Wilders from the United Kingdom.

Would this have happened if Mr Wilders had said "Ban the Bible"?

Our western society, and indeed the majority of peaceful Muslims, are being intimidated far too much by violent Islamists. On this occasion, the British government is guilty of appeasement.

We do not agree with Geert Wilders that the Koran should be banned – even in Holland where 'Mein Kampf' is banned. We don't want it banned but discussed – particularly by the majority Muslim community; and specifically as to whether it may promote or justify - or has promoted or justified - violence. We are therefore promoting freedom of speech.

Geert Wilder's 'Fitna' film (available on the web) is not a threat to anyone. It merely suggests how the Koran has been used by militant Islamists to promote and justify their violence.

They react in fury and menace to our intention to show the film and have boasted that their threats of aggressive demonstrations prevented its previous showing in the Mother of Parliaments. This was not the case – the event was postponed to clarify issues of freedom of speech. The threat of intimidation in fact increases the justification for the film to be shown and discussed in Parliament and by the British and international press.

Indeed, any alleged threats associated with Lord Ahmed of attempts to prevent the showing of the film would themselves be a confirmation of the film’s message and the need for it to be shown.

The subsequent action by the Home Office to try to deter Mr Wilders from coming to the UK has, we believe, been rightly condemned by the Dutch foreign minister, and is a further example of the appeasement policies of the British government in giving in to the threats of militant Islam.

We intend to show and discuss the film with members of the British Parliament and the press as previously indicated, with or without Mr Wilders."


The worm is twitching and peeking around:p

[dayag]

Protests and threats of violence are self defeating. The more people protest, the more attention they draw to Wilders film, and the more people will view it online.

[Mediocrates]

They call that the Frankie Says Relax Effect.

[Sharona]

Exactly.

I've followed this story with interest. Had Ahmed acted less hysterically, the chances are no one would have even heard of Wilders. All Ahmed has done is to give yet another impression that Islam is dangerous.

The majority of Brits who are aware of this story are sympathetic to the aims of the Lords involved - which is simply to discuss how extremists appear to justify their particular aims via the Koran.

There are a few who maintain that Wilders intent is to incite hatred. However - he didn't ask to visit the UK, he was invited. He has never suggested that he should be allowed to trot about the country giving talks. He hasn't asked for airtime or to have his film screened in public cinemas. I don't quite see how his visit is 'incitement' if he never asked to come here in the first place.:scratch:

The problem is the double-standards in play here. We do have preachers of hate. We do have Hizb ut-Tahrir openly holding meetings. I know that because they were in an area near me. The police do not prevent these preachers or organisations from speaking, claiming that they will simply go underground.

But how is it possible that Wilders, an EU politician - who, as I said, was invited to the UK and hasn't asked for a public forum - can be banned from setting foot in the country, whilst the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir (and Ahmed, too) can openly incite hatred, turmoil and national security?

Bizarre.

[kozzol]

Lord Pearce just asked lord nasir Ahmed why is it that if a moslem converts to christianity why they should have a death penalty put on them by the moslem community.

Lord Ahmed wouldnt answer his question but did go on to state about Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, which suggest with the latter that he is implying Britain is guilty of war crimes.

[Sharona]

Then he should leave our war crime orientated country, shouldn't he?

Why stay? He's of no use to anyone except his extremist friends.

I'll be more than happy to pack his bags - I'll even pay his taxi fare to the airport.

Shall we start up a collection, Kozzol?:p

It really, really tees me off when I see these extremist-types rant on about the decadence of the West and the UK whilst living off the fat of the land, and making good use of its liberal laws and its freedoms. Hypocrites.

[Mediocrates]

Salman Rushdie must be laughing his head off.

[kozzol]

My opinion is that this will be the turning of the tide in the UK as people like Lord Pearce will not let it go as he wants to further his political career in the conservative party.

In the UK you can watch the debate between Pearce and Ahmed on sky news by pressing the red button, it is worth watching.

Ahmed accuses Pearson of being in the BNP to sorts, as he has been getting threats from them and blames Pearce.

If we start up a collection for his and others air tickets, I think there would not be a lack of donaters.:rofl:

[kozzol]

Salman Rushdie must be laughing his head off.

Salman still has a Fatwa on his head so still might think he may lose it. NOT!!!!:)

[Mediocrates]

Fancy That (http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/02/12/fancy-that/)

David T, February 12th 2009, 1:30 pm
The Muslim Council of Britain (http://www.mcb.org.uk/article_detail.php?article=announcement-775) on Geert Wilders’ exclusion:
Geert Wilders has been an open and relentless preacher of hate, there is little difference between his views and those of the far right. We have no problem with the challenge of criticisms to our faith, but the film that will be screened tomorrow by Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox is nothing less than a cheap and tacky attempt to whip up hysteria against Muslims.

Mr Wilders’ xenophobic and repugnant views have been identified by a Dutch court, and are now confirmed by his official exclusion to the United Kingdom. It is now time to ask why Peers of Realm who promote such demagogues without any censure are allowed to be regarded as mainstream, responsible leaders in our community.

The Muslim Council of Britain (http://www.mcb.org.uk/media/presstext.php?ann_id=286) on the denial of a visa to Yusuf Al Qaradawi:

The Muslim Council of Britain deplores the government’s decision to refuse a visa to the renowned Islamic scholar Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
The MCB recognizes the Prime Minister has been under immense pressure from the pro-Zionist and neo-conservative lobby in recent weeks to take this decision. It is regrettable that the government has finally given way to these unreasonable demands spearheaded by the Tory leader whose government had in fact allowed Dr Qaradawi to visit the UK five times between 1995-97.

‘Yusuf Al Qaradawi enjoys unparalleled respect and influence throughout the Muslim world. I am afraid this decision will send the wrong message to Muslims everywhere about the state of British society and culture. Britain has had a long and established tradition of free speech, debate and intellectual pursuit. These principles are worth defending, especially if we would like to see them spread throughout the world,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Yusuf Al Qaradawi (http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/02/03/qaradawi-and-hitler/) on Hitler, Muslims and Jews:

Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.
[...]
To conclude my speech, I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you.

Will this government make a formal exclusion order against Qaradawi, as they have against Wilders?
Will exclusion orders be made against the Hezbollah propagandist Ibrahim Mousawi (http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/02/15/will-gordon-ban-hezbollahs-ibrahim-mousawi/) and Bilal Phillips and Yahya Ibrahim, the hate preachers (http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/02/11/banning-extremists/) - one banned from Australia and one from the United States - who will tour British universities next month?


http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/02/12/fancy-that/

[Sharona]

What Conservative party, Kozzol?

They have refused to comment on the Wilders case. The following is taken from the Mail online:


"Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it.

'But there is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech, and that is where it is likely to incite violence or hatred against someone or some group.
'Where there is risk of harm to others, there has to be some limit.
'Having watched Geert Wilders' movie Fitna, with its raw and emotional appeals to anti-Islamic feeling and its shocking images of violence, there is no doubt in my mind that he has overstepped the line that should be defended in a civilised society and that the Home Secretary's ruling is right.'

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said it did not wish to comment" Typical of 'Call me Dave' Cameron. All style, no substance - much less backbone.

I don't say Huhne is wrong. There must be no warm fire and slippers made ready for those who wish to incite violence. But as I've said, Wilders didn't ask to come here, hold meetings all over the UK and have his film shown in the cinema. Unlike the cleric mentioned above, the likes of Ibrahim Moussawi, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the dozen others we know full well are doing just that.

And of course, I expect Ahmed will just walk away from any responsibility after threatening us with his 10,000.


I don't think the government have read it correctly this time. There is always an assumption that an incident will flare up and then blow over the next day. I don't think this will continue to be the case. As has been mentioned, 1,000 cuts ultimately hurt.

[Anatolia]

It's sad that you can't call racist a racist. If Wilders made anti-semitic remarks or an anti-semitic movie you would all criticise him.Are we against all sort of racism or not?

[bararallu]

It's sad that you can't call racist a racist. If Wilders made anti-semitic remarks or an anti-semitic movie you would all criticise him.Are we against all sort of racism or not?

I think he's aligned himself with racists. And by connection that makes him sorta racist too. This is not a criticism of his position on religion, just his sordid new friends in Belgium.

I think Jews should be careful in supporting right wing European movements. They are not equivalent to Israel or most north American right wing parties, which are patriotic and race ambivalent or disregarding. In our govt, our ultra right wing parties include Africans (Ethiopian Jews) and native Arab speakers (e.g. Druze), and in some numbers not just tokens. This is virtually unknown in Europe.

I fully back Charles Johnson on calling out people who support one sort of fascism to combat another.

[Aviva]

It's sad that you can't call racist a racist. If Wilders made anti-semitic remarks or an anti-semitic movie you would all criticise him.Are we against all sort of racism or not?

No, I can't see how it's about race, seeing as Islam isn't a race. He's criticising the ideology of Islam. Rather than silencing his criticism, Muslim leaders could hear him out and refute his criticism if it's found to be unsubstantiated. That's what Jews would do. Banning him isn't fair. He's been banned not because of his opinions but of how Muslims will riot because of them.

As for your reference to anti-semitism, that isn't really a valid equation, firstly because anti-semitism IS more akin to racism than Islamophobia is and secondly, because the holy books of Judaism aren't considered infallible to criticism and Jews don't perform heinous atrocities across the world in their name.

[bararallu]

I used to respect the man, not now though. (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32198_Geert_Wilders_and_Vlaams_Belang)

[kozzol]

bararallu wrote


I used to respect the man, not now though.

Do you think he would side with people who are antisemitic when he has such a great love of Israel and her people?

[bararallu]

bararallu wrote



Do you think he would side with people who are antisemitic when he has such a great love of Israel and her people?

I really don't know how much love he has of Israel. The BNP and some element of the NF claim to love Israel too. But what they are trying to do is find political parity with a historically anti-racist group of people, the Jews. And for all intents and purposes he has sided with an antisemitic party (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31845_Vlaams_Belang_and_National_Front_Leaders_Cau ght_Mocking_Holocaust_-_English_Subtitles#rss), the Vlaams Belang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Belang). As a counterpoint,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is known to be a liberal political critic of Islam in the Netherlands, and to whom Vlaams Belang on different occasions referred to defend its points of view on Islam, called the party "a racist, anti-Semitic, extremist party that is unkind to women and that should be outlawed."

[Sharona]

The point of the issue - for me at least - is nothing to do with Wilders views. For all I know he might be a racist, anti-everything bigot who dreams longingly of Hitler.

Unfortunately, now we'll never know.

The point is mostly about freedom of speech, hypocrisy and attempts to intimidate a Government by threats.

The UK government has allowed visas to be issued to Muslim extremist clerics who, in turn, incite hatred and civil unrest. It is fully aware that there are organisations in the UK who hold open meetings doing much the same thing.
It allows them apparent freedom, saying that to ban them would drive them underground. The views of the extremist clerics and organisations are utterly distasteful and offensive to the UK. Such sensitivities are ignored by the government despite the fact that we have had home-grown suicide bombers and at least two attempts to blow up planes and airports.

Wilders has a view - at least this is what he openly states, maybe his private motivations are indeed different - that it is certain aspects of the Koran that are being used to justify this hatred and violence and believes they should be banned. Because this may be offensive to the muslim community, Wilders has been banned from entering the country.

Do you not see the double-standards here?

One blogger has pointed out that if Wilders had, instead, wished the bible to be banned, he would have been granted access to the UK. This is probably very true.


Because Ahmed threatened the government with what amounts to civil unrest, they banned Wilders. (????)The irony of it is that it is the 10,000 muslims that the government fear will create the unrest that has handed Wilders the game, set and match.

[kozzol]

Geert Wilders

...But now, he said, “there are different sounds coming from Vlaams Belang. Some people say they have changed, even from the Jewish community. That they have changed their tune. Others say they haven’t. I have to look into it and talk to people and study it more. I’m not saying it is impossible.”

However, he added, “we will not ally ourselves with parties like that of France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen.”

He said that he wuld talk and study it more, but if he did then he would lose any support that I have for him, because like the BNP and Vlaams Belang, leopards never change their spots.

[Aviva]

One blogger has pointed out that if Wilders had, instead, wished the bible to be banned, he would have been granted access to the UK. This is probably very true.

I would say this is definitely true. I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd heard outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins saying such a thing. No one would really get involved with such a statement except for church leaders who would wring their hands in despair but there would be no big kerfuffle about it.

One thing's for sure, Wilders will probably be assassinated sooner or later like that other Dutchman who made a critical film about Islam a few years ago.

[kozzol]

.....Because Ahmed threatened the government with what amounts to civil unrest, they banned Wilders. (????)The irony of it is that it is the 10,000 muslims that the government fear will create the unrest that has handed Wilders the game, set and match.

I think that threat over time will come back to haunt Nasir Ahmed.

[Sharona]

Aviva and Kozzol..

You didn't by any chance watch 'Question Time' did you?

I can't bring myself to watch it - not after DD's actions. Still, I'm wondering if the 'Wilders' question came up.

[kozzol]

One blogger has pointed out that if Wilders had, instead, wished the bible to be banned, he would have been granted access to the UK. This is probably very true.

Lord Pearce actually said the same thing on national tv and it has now been demonstrated through Wilders film 'Fitna' which I should imagine is being watched throughout the world right this minute, by hundreds of thousands of people, what the true aims of fanatical moslems intent is and what fuels that intent, the Quran.

[Sharona]

The film does show the worst of Sharia law. Perhaps Wilders might have done better to point that out.

Still - he doesn't tell any lies. Planes did fly into buildings, trains and buses were blown up, burqa-clad women have been beheaded.

I don't think I'd ever heard of Sharia until it began to rear its head in Iran.
Over time its more punitive aspects have spread. The fact that it has done so is the worry that is difficult to ignore. Especially when it shows its milder side in the UK - you really can't help but wonder if it will grow. I read of one muslim cleric saying that the chopping off of a hand or two in the UK wouldn't be a bad thing either. Eeeek!!

[bararallu]

The point of the issue - for me at least - is nothing to do with Wilders views. For all I know he might be a racist, anti-everything bigot who dreams longingly of Hitler.

Unfortunately, now we'll never know.

The point is mostly about freedom of speech, hypocrisy and attempts to intimidate a Government by threats.

I think the govt is just being "pragmatic". They are loathe to have a riot on their hands. Ahmed and others have already incited the Muslim public, it will throw the proverbial match on the tinder. Not saying they aren't acting cowardly or consistently, they are just fixated in fear. It's much easier to [quietly] point a finger at the French (or much more usually the Israelis) and say that sort of stuff never happens here. But the arrival of Wilders will almost certainly have serious repercussions. There are incitement laws in the UK, but non are administered against Islamists it seems who use free speech to pretty much affect foreign policy at this point.

All this is just complicated by the fact that Wilders has made common cause with racist anti-Semites. Whether he is or is not himself, is plainly now irrelevant. Mussolini and the Japanese may have loved Jews, but they enabled the genocide. Same logic applies.

[Sharona]

Oh, I can see the pragmatism - but I also see a distinct gap where a spine should be.

The only way back for the government is to now apply this same rationale with some vigour across the board.

[Steven]

The film does show the worst of Sharia law. Perhaps Wilders might have done better to point that out.

Still - he doesn't tell any lies. Planes did fly into buildings, trains and buses were blown up, burqa-clad women have been beheaded.

I don't think I'd ever heard of Sharia until it began to rear its head in Iran.
Over time its more punitive aspects have spread. The fact that it has done so is the worry that is difficult to ignore. Especially when it shows its milder side in the UK - you really can't help but wonder if it will grow. I read of one muslim cleric saying that the chopping off of a hand or two in the UK wouldn't be a bad thing either. Eeeek!!

It is more than one. I saw one poll that said that over 40% of the Muslims there want sharia.

Look at these Islamic leaders from the UK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKsb7yTGdvQ&eurl=http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/search?q=anti-sharia+petition

[bararallu]

There seems to be little inertia. And where a strong un-ambivalent right should exist, there is the bloody BNP and the rather weak kneed Conservative Party.

[Sharona]

You're not wrong there Bararallu:rolleyes:

'Call me Dave' Cameron and his sidekick, Osbourn. Give me strength!!

The problem is that Blair set a sort of strange standard - well, a couple actually. The first was 'style' - now some seem to think politicians need to have oodles of charisma, like a rock star, really. Or, like Hitler. My father was working in Germany as Hitler's star was rising and said he was a highly charismatic man. Women got hysterical over him, chased his car....all that nonsense.

Blair also moved 'spin' to an entirely new level. So much so that when a politician speaks, no one knows if its fact or fiction.

The British public have now become so disengaged with the political system that it's actually dangerous. Voter apathy in France almost got Jean-Marie Le Pen a foot through the door.


Cameron is perhaps the most charismatic leader since Maggie. It is this that has turned the tide for the Conservatives. It can't be his policies because no one really knows what they are.:lol:

[kozzol]

Maybe Cameron is just going to wait and see what the back lash will be and if the voice is stronger from the public in favour of Wilders, then who knows he may decide to use the Islaminization issues for political gain in the voting booth.

[bararallu]

And most probably no one will know. I hope it wont be another 7/7 that will bring in fresh faces and ideas into the Parliament. Reactionary politics have a tinge of, well the guillotine.

[kozzol]

And most probably no one will know. I hope it wont be another 7/7 that will bring in fresh faces and ideas into the Parliament...

Lets hope not but then the general public of the UK do not seem to have woken up to the threat that lays within our own borders, yes they are stirring but not fully awake.

Tonight we lost another young soldier in Afghanistan, another young life lost fighting the very enemy that walks the streets of the UK shouting for sharia law to be intorduced into the UK.

[Sharona]

Yes, Kozzol - but I don't much like those type of politics.

I believe politicians should listen to the people - but I don't think they should base their policies on whichever way the wind blows.

If Cameron got in on am 'Islamisation' ticket and it wasn't genuine, who's to say he wouldn't make an about-turn two years later if threatened a la Ahmed?

His test was now - when Ahmed was making the threat. It's too easy to speak up after the fact.

He's done something like this with his 'hug a hoodie' mantra. Daft apeth! To say nothing of his Huskie-ride trip. It's posturing, and I don't like it.

The only politician I actually had time for was Charles Kennedy. I can recall one older journalist saying that the loss of Charles Kennedy was a bigger blow to the UK than they realised. They hadn't had the opportunity to listen to him because the media wouldn't give him airtime.

I did notice coming up to the 2007 election, during a debate with Blair and Howard - that Blair was booed, Howard got no reaction - but they cheered Kennedy.

He got it spot on with Iraq inasmuch as he warned the UK that they simply didn't understand the ME mindset (he called it 'pride', to be diplomatic). This is one of my pet arguments, though. That you can't take western logic and apply it all around the world. Which essentially is what Kennedy was saying.

[kozzol]

The only politician I actually had time for was Charles Kennedy. I can recall one older journalist saying that the loss of Charles Kennedy was a bigger blow to the UK than they realised. They hadn't had the opportunity to listen to him because the media wouldn't give him airtime.

Or was it just that they couldnt catch him sober?:rofl::rofl:

I agree with your last post you hit the nail on the head ;)

[Sharona]

:lol:

Bless him! He did like his whiskey and his smokes, didn't he? Probably still does.

I've met Kennedy, Hughes, Huhne and Clegg.

In 2007 I went to a LibDem pre-election meeting where Hughes gave a speech. Actually, I was impressed. There were no cameras, no journalists - so no posturing.

Hughes told his people NOT to spin or sling mud in the election campaign. It was OK to point out the weaknesses in the opposition's policies or statements, but it was NOT right to distort truth, attack personalities or otherwise play mucky politics. Impressive after the Blair years.

Clegg has his heart in the right place - he appears to really care about people more than politics, but he comes over as someone who perhaps needs to pop into bed cuddling his teddy bear. Huhne should have been the LibDem's leader - he's a pretty strong person.

I think he would have been the leader, too. As they toured the country, people were seeing them slug it out and realising that Clegg was well-meaning, but needed more experience. The postal strike made the vital difference.

[Aviva]

And most probably no one will know. I hope it wont be another 7/7 that will bring in fresh faces and ideas into the Parliament. Reactionary politics have a tinge of, well the guillotine.

Isn't it funny how the facts of 7/7 have been all but forgotten in all this, as well as well the countless other attacks that have been thwarted at the final moment, like the attack on Glasgow airport. There have been so many.

The liberal dream to integrate people who support such actions (whether actively or passively) and the pandering to Muslim sensibilities should have stopped after 7/7 but it just increased. It just shows you how effectively terrorism works.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if it will only take another bigger 7/7 style atrocity to make people realise this. Similar attacks are probably being plotted as we speak. But if (or when) one occurs again, many people will blame us for it anyway, saying we forced the Muslims into it.

[Rob]

-I can guarantee Wilders is as pro-Israel as it gets and is not anti-semitic at all, on the contrary. He talked with Vlaams Belang. So what? Jews in Israel in the 1930s talked with the nazi´s and the predecessor of Likud even wanted a deal concerning agricultural machines with the nazi´s.

-What I donot like about him is that he talks about Muslim being all the same (as in terrorists). There are good law abiding Muslims, making valuable contribution to society (even in Israel). He places those Muslims in the same category as the Islamic terrorists. And thats just ain´t right.

He plays the game very well. He keeps his cool and gained a lot of support due to his ban in the UK and his presecution in Holland. And, yes, the last (banning and persecution) also increased my sympathy for him.

[kozzol]

Rob wrote


-What I donot like about him is that he talks about Muslim being all the same (as in terrorists). There are good law abiding Muslims, making valuable contribution to society (even in Israel). He places those Muslims in the same category as the Islamic terrorists. And thats just ain´t right.

People can generalise even though they do not mean every single person or object they are discussing.

Here in the UK during the debate between Lord Pearce and Lord nasir Ahmed concerning Geert Wilders and his film 'Fitna', Lord Pearce argued that 'Wilders' was not branding all moslems as fanatics but showing the moderates that there are commands in the Quran which need to be addressed.

I have worked with Palestinians in Israel and not every palestinian is a potential terrorist, but until you know otherwise you should never let your defence down and the same applies to moslems.

[Steven]

-What I donot like about him is that he talks about Muslim being all the same (as in terrorists). There are good law abiding Muslims, making valuable contribution to society (even in Israel). He places those Muslims in the same category as the Islamic terrorists. And thats just ain´t right.

I respectfully disagree with you here Rob. There is a bottom line when it comes to Muslim immigration and that is trouble. We can see it across the world as there is no way to tell what their true intentions are. I believe that if non-Islamic countries do not end Muslim immigration, eventually we will lose. As they will never stop pushing. They took over the ME and Turkey. Now portions of Europe. That is what they do.

[Steven]

Rob wrote



People can generalise even though they do not mean every single person or object they are discussing.

Here in the UK during the debate between Lord Pearce and Lord nasir Ahmed concerning Geert Wilders and his film 'Fitna', Lord Pearce argued that 'Wilders' was not branding all moslems as fanatics but showing the moderates that there are commands in the Quran which need to be addressed.

I have worked with Palestinians in Israel and not every palestinian is a potential terrorist, but until you know otherwise you should never let your defence down and the same applies to moslems.


Watch at the about the 1:00 mark as Wilders calls Gordon Brown the biggest coward in Europe.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbPgOb3a5AQ&eurl=http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/

[Sharona]

Gordon's not best known for his courage, Steven.

Apparently, our Home Secretary is being called 'Jackboots Jacqui'. Love it!

I have no idea what Wilders' true motivations are, but he is right in saying that if he was allowed in to the UK five weeks ago for discussions about the same issue, what has now changed? The answer is reasonably clear to me - it's Achmed's threats.

He is also right in saying that the Government is not necessarily speaking on behalf of the majority. Given that the difference between five weeks ago and now is Achmed - one man - then that, too, is true.

As I said, I don't know Wilders real intentions. He may be the most racist bigot in the world, but he is gaining in popularity around the EU. It behoves us, then, to find out what his motives are and we cannot do that without discussion.

[Steven]

Gordon's not best known for his courage, Steven.

Apparently, our Home Secretary is being called 'Jackboots Jacqui'. Love it!

I have no idea what Wilders' true motivations are, but he is right in saying that if he was allowed in to the UK five weeks ago for discussions about the same issue, what has now changed? The answer is reasonably clear to me - it's Achmed's threats.

He is also right in saying that the Government is not necessarily speaking on behalf of the majority. Given that the difference between five weeks ago and now is Achmed - one man - then that, too, is true.

As I said, I don't know Wilders real intentions. He may be the most racist bigot in the world, but he is gaining in popularity around the EU. It behoves us, then, to find out what his motives are and we cannot do that without discussion.

:lol: Just so you know. How I feel about your govt has no reflection on you mates here. You guys are great.

I truly believe that Wilders want to save Europe from an Islamic takeover. To do this, being nice is not the answer. That is just the way it is.
If the UK denied his entry because of Lord Ahmed, Lord Ahmed has just been empowered.

[Sharona]

Say what you want about the UK Government, Steven.

I doubt I'll contradict you.:lol:

I don't like being blamed for their policies, though - that's the only proviso.:)
S-limey-type name calling doesn't do it for me.

[kozzol]

Wilders got it right steven. Unfortunately for the British people Gordon Brown is willing to be bullied into decision making by the racist Lord Nasir Ahmed and this is not the signs of a strong political leader.

[Sharona]

If the UK denied his entry because of Lord Ahmed, Lord Ahmed has just been empowered.

Lord, indeed! There are some perfectly good Muslims who'd make a far better job of being in the House. Quite why this man got a peerage is beyond me. Apparently, when discussing this issue on TV and radio, Ahmed descended into incoherence or irrelevancy, whilst his opponents looked calm, collected and rational.

No, I think this one is 'Game, Set and Match' to Wilders. Thanks to Ahmed.
The publicity alone must be invaluable. Which kind of shows you how empty-headed Ahmed has been. Nothing has changed in respect of 'Fitna'. The film was shown - the only difference being that a) instead of small audience in the Lords, millions probably watched it on YouTube.b) Almost every Brit will know about Ahmed's '10,000' threat and the Government's position. If you look around the online news, blogs and similar internet resources that allow for comments, I'd say more people disagree with the Government than support it.

As I said, the whole episode is 'Game, Set, Match - Wilders'.

[Steven]

Lord, indeed! There are some perfectly good Muslims who'd make a far better job of being in the House. Quite why this man got a peerage is beyond me. Apparently, when discussing this issue on TV and radio, Ahmed descended into incoherence or irrelevancy, whilst his opponents looked calm, collected and rational.

No, I think this one is 'Game, Set and Match' to Wilders. Thanks to Ahmed.
The publicity alone must be invaluable. Which kind of shows you how empty-headed Ahmed has been. Nothing has changed in respect of 'Fitna'. The film was shown - the only difference being that a) instead of small audience in the Lords, millions probably watched it on YouTube.b) Almost every Brit will know about Ahmed's '10,000' threat and the Government's position. If you look around the online news, blogs and similar internet resources that allow for comments, I'd say more people disagree with the Government than support it.

As I said, the whole episode is 'Game, Set, Match - Wilders'.

Good points. Wilders will not back down and is looking to show the film to my Congress. Every Brit I know is sick of your govt, a govt who only cares about catering to Islam and forgets about the rest of you guys. I do not blame you, just vote them out PLEASE.:p

[Steven]

Wilders got it right steven. Unfortunately for the British people Gordon Brown is willing to be bullied into decision making by the racist Lord Nasir Ahmed and this is not the signs of a strong political leader.

Out side of Italy and Russia's Putin, does the West have any strong leaders now?

[Sharona]

I've never voted for them, Steven. Ever - in my entire life.

The problem at the moment is that although the Conservatives are ahead in polls, it doesn't mean they're any stronger than Labour in terms of policies.

They've just got 'Call me Dave' Cameron who is, as they say, style over substance. And Boris the Buffoon of course, the Member for Henley and Mayor of London. Having said that, Boris is extremely popular and is always in hot water because he tends to say what he thinks. His party leap around like scalded cats when he makes a gaff, but actually, it's often what the people are thinking - hence his popularity.

As buffoonish as he appears, he is an exceptionally clever man.

[Sharona]

Most of my husband's family are in France and apparently, the headlines there are mostly about Carla Bruni. Oh, and the odd riot - but mostly Carla.

[andak01]

Out side of Italy and Russia's Putin, does the West have any strong leaders now?

You mean strong like Moussolini?

[kozzol]

I dont know if you are keeping up with Italian politics andak01? Mussolini was hung a very long time ago and the italians have a new goverment.

[Steven]

I dont know if you are keeping up with Italian politics andak01? Mussolini was hung a very long time ago and the italians have a new goverment.

He does not want us to concentrate on the present and he wants to disrupt every threat. He is like a little kid.

[kozzol]

Concerning andak01


He does not want us to concentrate on the present and he wants to disrupt every threat. He is like a little kid.

I think this was demonstrated when he spewed his racist bile against Tonto on another thread concerning Tonto's ancestry.

[Kenneth]

Out side of Italy and Russia's Putin, does the West have any strong leaders now?

They say Merkel can bench press a Trabant engine.

[Y. Shulamith]

I dont know if you are keeping up with Italian politics andak01? Mussolini was hung a very long time ago and the italians have a new goverment.

Yeah, he was dragged through the streets along with his mistress, Clara Pittacchi.....:cool:

[Steven]

They say Merkel can bench press a Trabant engine.

:p I forgot about her. How is she doing?

[friendofisrael]

I'd love to see a British 'Wilders' emerge. As has been said earlier the Conservatives are only marginally better than Labour. The BNP seem to be on the rise, and that's a shame. Their gains show concern at the islamification of Britain, but they remain anti-semitic and criminal thugs.

We need someone strong, charismatic, and outspoken to say openly what much of the country must be thinking- and run for office. I believe GB is still 'great,' at a grass roots level at least. If we had someone to capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the ordinary people, and ignore political correctness we could make some changes. Why can't we say we have a Muslim problem without being called racist? Where is the modern day Churchill to get us out of this mess? Help!

[Sharona]

How about Will Self?

I watched him on question time recently, when they were waffling on about selling cigarettes under the counter in order to discourage young people from smoking.

The politicians were giving forth on their opinion as to whether this is a good idea or not. Will Self - in his extremely dry manner - pointed out that we have kids on drugs, under-age kids drinking alcohol - plus a few other serious issues - which makes the Government's concern about cigarettes under counters a nonsense. He went on to say that they focus on things they know they can achieve quite easily - to a ludicrous extent (hammering smokers because they're easy targets, or fining people for driving at 33mph in a 30mph zone) but do absolutely nothing that requires targeting some real and pressing issues.

The applause was deafening.

[Steven]

I'd love to see a British 'Wilders' emerge. As has been said earlier the Conservatives are only marginally better than Labour. The BNP seem to be on the rise, and that's a shame. Their gains show concern at the islamification of Britain, but they remain anti-semitic and criminal thugs.

That sounds like the politics in the USA. There is not much difference between the Democrats and the Republican parties anymore. They both stink.


We need someone strong, charismatic, and outspoken to say openly what much of the country must be thinking- and run for office. I believe GB is still 'great,' at a grass roots level at least. If we had someone to capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the ordinary people, and ignore political correctness we could make some changes. Why can't we say we have a Muslim problem without being called racist? Where is the modern day Churchill to get us out of this mess? Help!

Please do not back down when they call you a "racist". That is exactly what they want. Just ask them what race is Islam. Stay positive, it only takes one strong leader to get the ball rolling.

[Sharona]

I've just read the speech Wilders would have given at the Lords had he been permitted entry. Essentially, he is saying that Islam is less of a religion and more of a political ideology. He does keep harking back to Churchill - I think a psychological point being made here.

I also read a letter in the Telegraph where the author asks that Saudi authorities be banned from the UK because they are not actually speaking about banning the bible - they've done it.

Interesting point.

I have seen so few comments in favour of Wilders ban as to be meaningless. Except amongst the politicians, of course.

I think we need the debate. We need to clear the air because what smoulders underneath is always dangerous in the end.

[Steven]

I've just read the speech Wilders would have given at the Lords had he been permitted entry. Essentially, he is saying that Islam is less of a religion and more of a political ideology. He does keep harking back to Churchill - I think a psychological point being made here.

I also read a letter in the Telegraph where the author asks that Saudi authorities be banned from the UK because they are not actually speaking about banning the bible - they've done it.

Interesting point.

I have seen so few comments in favour of Wilders ban as to be meaningless. Except amongst the politicians, of course.

I think we need the debate. We need to clear the air because what smoulders underneath is always dangerous in the end.

Exactly, it is more of a political movement than a religion.

Are the Saudis really talking about trying to get the Bible banned there? If you have a link please post it.

France does not allow any foreign funding for Mosques (probably all houses of worship).

[Sharona]

I don't have a link, Steven. It was in a letter I read in the online Daily Telegraph - I can't, therefore, tell you if the claim is valid or not.

I've been trying to find out a little about Wilders - trying to get to the bottom of his views. I 'Googled' his name and one of the first sites to come up was the Telegraph. I'm interested in the views of the country on this - as opposed to what the politicians say.

Another point being made on the web is that the Brits do see Ahmed as the root cause of all this. What I hadn't considered - until seeing this point - is that as a Lord, is isn't an elected parliamentarian.

The Lords are given peerages for services to the UK. They aren't elected by the people.

[kozzol]

This would have been Geert Wilders speech to the House of Lords if allowed;


London, Feb. 12, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you Lord Pearson and Lady Cox for showing Fitna, and for your gracious invitation. While others look away, you, seem to understand the true tradition of your country, and a flag that still stands for freedom.

This is no ordinary place. This is not just one of England’s tourist attractions. This is a sacred place. This is the mother of all Parliaments, and I am deeply humbled to speak before you.
The Houses of Parliament is where Winston Churchill stood firm, and warned – all throughout the 1930’s – for the dangers looming. Most of the time he stood alone.

In 1982 President Reagan came to the House of Commons, where he did a speech very few people liked. Reagan called upon the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced a phrase: ‘evil empire’. Reagan’s speech stands out as a clarion call to preserve our liberties. I quote: If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

What Reagan meant is that you cannot run away from history, you cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you. Denial is no option.

Communism was indeed left on the ash heap of history, just as Reagan predicted in his speech in the House of Commons. He lived to see the Berlin Wall coming down, just as Churchill witnessed the implosion of national-socialism.

Today, I come before you to warn of another great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, the end of democracy. It is not a religion, it is a political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you.

There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Islam will never change, because it is build on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never go away. First, there is Quran, Allah’s personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect.

Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about it’s goal. That’s a given. The question is whether the British people, with its glorious past, is longing for that submission.

We see Islam taking off in the West at an incredible speed. The United Kingdom has seen a rapid growth of the number of Muslims. Over the last ten years, the Muslim population has grown ten times as fast as the rest of society. This has put an enormous pressure on society. Thanks to British politicians who have forgotten about Winston Churchill, the English now have taken the path of least resistance. They give up. They give in.
Thank you very much for letting me into the country. I received a letter from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, kindly disinviting me. I would threaten community relations, and therefore public security in the UK, the letter stated. For a moment I feared that I would be refused entrance. But I was confident the British government would never sacrifice free speech because of fear of Islam. Britannia rules the waves, and Islam will never rule Britain, so I was confident the Border Agency would let me through. And after all, you have invited stranger creatures than me. Two years ago the House of Commons welcomed Mahmoud Suliman Ahmed Abu Rideh, linked to Al Qaeda. He was invited to Westminster by Lord Ahmed, who met him at Regent’s Park mosque three weeks before. Mr. Rideh, suspected of being a money man for terror groups, was given a SECURITY sticker for his Parliamentary visit.

Well, if you let in this man, than an elected politician from a fellow EU country surely is welcome here too. By letting me speak today you show that Mr Churchill’s spirit is still very much alive. And you prove that the European Union truly is working; the free movement of persons is still one of the pillars of the European project.

But there is still much work to be done. Britain seems to have become a country ruled by fear. A country where civil servants cancel Christmas celebrations to please Muslims. A country where Sharia Courts are part of the legal system. A country where Islamic organizations asked to stop the commemoration of the Holocaust. A country where a primary school cancels a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with an Islamic festival. A country where a school removes the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar so as not to offend Muslims. A country where a teacher punishes two students for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. A country where elected members of a town council are told not to eat during daylight hours in town hall meetings during the Ramadan. A country that excels in its hatred of Israel, still the only democracy in the Middle-East. A country whose capitol is becoming ‘Londonistan’.

I would not qualify myself as a free man. Four and a half years ago I lost my freedom. I am under guard permanently, courtesy to those who prefer violence to debate. But for the leftist fan club of islam, that is not enough. They started a legal procedure against me. Three weeks ago the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ordered my criminal prosecution for making ‘Fitna’ and for my views on Islam. I committed what George Orwell called a ‘thought crime’.

You might have seen my name on Fitna’s credit role, but I am not really responsible for that movie. It was made for me. It was actually produced by Muslim extremists, the Quran and Islam itself. If Fitna is considered ‘hate speech’, then how would the Court qualify the Quran, with all it’s calls for violence, and hatred against women and Jews? Mr. Churchill himself compared the Quran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Well, I did exactly the same, and that is what they are prosecuting me for.

I wonder if the UK ever put Mr. Churchill on trial.

The Court’s decision and the letter I received form the Secretary of State for the Home Department are two major victories for all those who detest freedom of speech. They are doing Islam’s dirty work. Sharia by proxy. The differences between Saudi-Arabia and Jordan on one hand and Holland and Britain are blurring. Europe is now on the fast track of becoming Eurabia. That is apparently the price we have to pay for the project of mass immigration, and the multicultural project.

Ladies and gentlemen, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack. In Europe, freedom of speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a natural component of our existence is now something we again have to fight for. That is what is at stake. Whether or not I end up in jail is not the most pressing issue. The question is: Will free speech be put behind bars?

We have to defend freedom of speech.

For the generation of my parents the word ‘London’ is synonymous with hope and freedom. When my country was occupied by the national-socialists the BBC offered a daily glimpse of hope, in the darkness of Nazi tyranny. Millions of my country men listened to it, illegally. The words ‘This Is London’ were a symbol for a better world coming soon. If only the British and Canadian and American soldiers were here.

What will be transmitted forty years from now? Will it still be ‘This Is London’? Or will it be ‘this is Londonistan’? Will it bring us hope, or will it signal the values of Mecca and Medina? Will Britain offer submission or perseverance? Freedom or slavery?

The choice is ours.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We will never apologize for being free. We will never give in. We will never surrender.

Freedom must prevail, and freedom will prevail.

Thank you very much.

Geert Wilders MP
Chairman, Party for Freedom (PVV)
The Netherlands

[Aviva]

How about Will Self?

I agree Will Self is a clever man but he may not be good for the Jews, seeing as although he's halachically Jewish, he's quite ambivalent towards the community. I would expect him to behave in an Alexei Sayle manner, given half the chance.

Thanks for Wilders speech, Kozzol. He certainly makes points that should at least be openly addressed, but the cowardly government will just see those points as "incitement".

[codedvirus]

Are the Saudis really talking about trying to get the Bible banned there? If you have a link please post it.


British stewardess challenges airline's Bible ban
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53571

Stewardess banned from carrying Bible
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1537373/Stewardess-banned-from-carrying-Bible.html

Washington Times - Saudi jailed for discussing the Bible
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/nov/14/20051114-015138-3548r/

English Airline Bans Bible on Saudi Arabia Flight
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/english.airline.bans.bible.on.saudi.arabia.flight/8917.htm

[Sharona]

When you look at most of the online comments, it would appear that the support for Wilders outweighs the criticism.

There are many calls for people to unite against the intelligentsia who are destroying the UK. The question is....how?

When the National Front were making waves, Margaret Thatcher said that the way to defeat them was through the ballot box. But who have we got now that is worth a vote? Cameron? For me, 'Call me Dave' has just shown his true colours by making the Tory official line 'no comment' in respect of the Wilders case. Spineless.

Perhaps they should have held fast to Michael Howard.

[Aviva]

There are many calls for people to unite against the intelligentsia who are destroying the UK. The question is....how?

Who are this intelligentsia? Who makes these policies? Where does the process begin? It's taken over everything - education, local government, social policy. I can't remember what life used to be like without this wet political correctness absolutely everywhere. Would a Conservative government change things all that much?


Perhaps they should have held fast to Michael Howard.

I think not. He's a Jew and that fact was already exploited by Labour in the election he lost, with those flying pigs posters. In this case, he would be seen very much as an enemy of Islam. I think David Cameron can muster more support but I also wish the Conservatives had a really decent leader; I would vote for them. I certainly voted Boris in as Mayor.

[Sharona]

The 'Intelligentsia' are the advisors - for the most part, hidden.

So I wonder what is the answer if it isn't through the ballot box? Cameron isn't really appealing to the 'grass roots' Conservatives but to potential new voters. He's moved the party to the centre...no, to the left.....hang on, perhaps we're moving right now. Who the hell knows where he's going - he never says.

[Steven]

When you look at most of the online comments, it would appear that the support for Wilders outweighs the criticism.


Without question.

There are many calls for people to unite against the intelligentsia who are destroying the UK. The question is....how?

It is a start.

When the National Front were making waves, Margaret Thatcher said that the way to defeat them was through the ballot box. But who have we got now that is worth a vote? Cameron? For me, 'Call me Dave' has just shown his true colours by making the Tory official line 'no comment' in respect of the Wilders case. Spineless.

That is disappointing. Staying on the fence shows weakness.

Perhaps they should have held fast to Michael Howard.

Hang in there mate. Any calls for Ahmed to step down?

[Sharona]

They'll probably promote him:p

Ahmed is a Lord - a life peer and not an elected member of Parliament. Peers still have party allegiances - Ahmed's is Labour - but I don't think the party itself will have much jurisdiction over him; unless it's to withdraw his membership. And frankly, I think I've got more chance of being bitten on the bum by a cabbage than of Labour kicking Ahmed out.

I have no idea how the system goes about taking such a title away. Can you imagine the outcry if the suggestion was bandied about?:rolleyes:

It is hugely disappointing that Cameron's lot kept quiet. Judging by the pro-Wilders response, I'll bet they're kicking themselves. Or their supporters will be doing something similar. Hopefully.

It is ludicrous when an unelected member of Parliament has the ability to prevent an elected EU member from entering the country. Particularly if he issues threats of civil unrest.

[Sharona]

A very valid comment from the Spectator blog:

"..As for your claim that "to pretend that they [Moslem extremists] pose a comparable danger to that we faced from Nazism or, for that matter, communism is absurd": let's compare London of, say, 1941 (at the height of the threat of Nazi invasion), or of the height of the Cold War, with today. Armed police, CCTV's everywhere, wide powers of stop-and-search, anti-terrorist devices - these were never needed in the past, not during two World Wars, not for forty years of the Cold War, not even to counter the threats of the IRA in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, when "the troubles" were at their all-time high.."

That's true enough. It shows the extent to which this particular brand of terrorism has affected life in the UK. And we're restricted/brainwashed by political correctness if we speak this truth or attempt to address the root cause. Crazy.

[Steven]

They'll probably promote him:p

Ahmed is a Lord - a life peer and not an elected member of Parliament. Peers still have party allegiances - Ahmed's is Labour - but I don't think the party itself will have much jurisdiction over him; unless it's to withdraw his membership. And frankly, I think I've got more chance of being bitten on the bum by a cabbage than of Labour kicking Ahmed out.

:p OK forget my idea, Labour is useless.


I have no idea how the system goes about taking such a title away. Can you imagine the outcry if the suggestion was bandied about?:rolleyes:

If I move there, how long will it take to get citizenship? I will glady get the ball rolling.:D

It is hugely disappointing that Cameron's lot kept quiet. Judging by the pro-Wilders response, I'll bet they're kicking themselves. Or their supporters will be doing something similar. Hopefully.

It is ludicrous when an unelected member of Parliament has the ability to prevent an elected EU member from entering the country. Particularly if he issues threats of civil unrest.


Because of politically correctness, the world is upside down. Muslims like Ahmed know full well how to use our system against us.

[Steven]

A very valid comment from the Spectator blog:

"..As for your claim that "to pretend that they [Moslem extremists] pose a comparable danger to that we faced from Nazism or, for that matter, communism is absurd": let's compare London of, say, 1941 (at the height of the threat of Nazi invasion), or of the height of the Cold War, with today. Armed police, CCTV's everywhere, wide powers of stop-and-search, anti-terrorist devices - these were never needed in the past, not during two World Wars, not for forty years of the Cold War, not even to counter the threats of the IRA in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, when "the troubles" were at their all-time high.."

That's true enough. It shows the extent to which this particular brand of terrorism has affected life in the UK. And we're restricted/brainwashed by political correctness if we speak this truth or attempt to address the root cause. Crazy.



The threat is just as bad as Nazism, they are just fighting us with a different approach. But if these nuts every get equal military might.............LOOK OUT!!

[Sharona]

Citizenship?

Well, if you're either a criminal, have the ability to sneak in (not hard, I believe), make undue threats or insist the Bible should be banned, I'd say you'll be welcome with open arms.:p

If, however, you are squeaky clean, intelligent enough to scorn the political correctness or happen to be an elected EU politician with a view different to King Ahmed, I'd say your chances are slim.:p

[Steven]

Citizenship?

Well, if you're either a criminal, have the ability to sneak in (not hard, I believe), make undue threats or insist the Bible should be banned, I'd say you'll be welcome with open arms.:p

If, however, you are squeaky clean, intelligent enough to scorn the political correctness or happen to be an elected EU politician with a view different to King Ahmed, I'd say your chances are slim.:p

:unsure: Damn!! Sorry I just don't hate you Brits.

How about cloning Margaret Thatcher? She would show them who is boss.:lol:

[Sharona]

Guarding London in 1941 seems almost simple compared to today.

Men coming home from work would have a meal, grab a tin helmet and an armband and go out on fire watch or Home Guard duties.:rolleyes:

Women would pull the black-out curtains, keep an ear out for the siren and hope for the best.

That the war was little else is overly-simplistic, but my family lived in London during the war and this is how they spoke of those days. Along with planes flying overhead and bombs dropping, of course. But it is, nevertheless, the everyday perception of everyday people.

The perception today - along with the security methods used - is different because the threat is not only from without but from within.

And of course, I don't recall my family feeling that they couldn't criticise the Nazis - or anyone else, for that matter.

[Sharona]

:unsure: Damn!! Sorry I just don't hate you Brits.

How about cloning Margaret Thatcher? She would show them who is boss.:lol:

Even that woman's hair didn't dare slip itself out of place.:lol:

Maggie and her handbag might well be all that is required.

Still, there are plenty of criticisms that could be levied against Mrs. T. However, I can't imagine her surrendering to nonsense. She wasn't a woman to suffer fools gladly.

[Steven]

Guarding London in 1941 seems almost simple compared to today.

Men coming home from work would have a meal, grab a tin helmet and an armband and go out on fire watch or Home Guard duties.:rolleyes:

Women would pull the black-out curtains, keep an ear out for the siren and hope for the best.

That the war was little else is overly-simplistic, but my family lived in London during the war and this is how they spoke of those days. Along with planes flying overhead and bombs dropping, of course. But it is, nevertheless, the everyday perception of everyday people.

The perception today - along with the security methods used - is different because the threat is not only from without but from within.

And of course, I don't recall my family feeling that they couldn't criticise the Nazis - or anyone else, for that matter.


Times did seem so much simpler back then. I always think that when I see those old black and white movies.

They are destroying us from within. Truthfully Islam should of never been allowed into non-Islamic countries in the first place. It is just opposite our way of life. The two sets of laws cannot coexist within the same country.

They know we cannot beat an enemy if we cannot even name him.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!! :clap:

[Steven]

Even that woman's hair didn't dare slip itself out of place.:lol:

Maggie and her handbag might well be all that is required.

Still, there are plenty of criticisms that could be levied against Mrs. T. However, I can't imagine her surrendering to nonsense. She wasn't a woman to suffer fools gladly.

Someone with her type of personality is what is needed. Remember they can always be voted out in the future.

Can you imagine how the sharia loving Muslims there would feel after being put in their place by a woman?:rofl:

[Sharona]

There isn't a strong personality at the moment. And I wouldn't look at the BNP. They remind me way too much of the old National Front - and they really were just thugs.

I saw their activists in action - their tactics were to hang around outside department stores handing out Nazi-style propaganda, complete with cartoon caricatures of Jews and rats running around in the background. One of their strategies was to harrass vulnerable people on public transport. 'Vulnerable' being anything obviously ethnic or foreign. They were Hitler lovers and made no secret of it.

I don't want to see that type of propaganda and thuggery back again. It's ugly and brutish. It's all very well to say you can vote people out, but no one knows what they might implement during their term that becomes irrevocable.

We need the issues we have managed in a civilised manner without any hint of nazism whatsoever. I don't trust the BNP to do that.

[Steven]

There isn't a strong personality at the moment. And I wouldn't look at the BNP. They remind me way too much of the old National Front - and they really were just thugs.

I saw their activists in action - their tactics were to hang around outside department stores handing out Nazi-style propaganda, complete with cartoon caricatures of Jews and rats running around in the background. One of their strategies was to harrass vulnerable people on public transport. 'Vulnerable' being anything obviously ethnic or foreign. They were Hitler lovers and made no secret of it.

I don't want to see that type of propaganda and thuggery back again. It's ugly and brutish. It's all very well to say you can vote people out, but no one knows what they might implement during their term that becomes irrevocable.

We need the issues we have managed in a civilised manner without any hint of nazism whatsoever. I don't trust the BNP to do that.


What happens if no one else is willing to confront the issue?

[Sharona]

I think there is a chance that Wilders has made the worm glance about a bit. There is tension running underneath the sitation the people of the UK find themselves in. I honestly don't know anyone who isn't fed-up to the back teeth with political correctness, crazy health and safety laws and the apparent denigration of Christianity and all things 'British', by the powers-that-be.

Even one or two of the Labour frontbenchers are aware that there is support for the BNP in their own constituencies. Though they are only concerned about holding onto their seats rather than anything else.

Maybe there will be protest votes - enough to create a few BNP councillors at local level. Who knows - perhaps even an MP or two in certain areas. I can remember the shock of the French election in which Jean-Marie Le Pen got a dangerous slice of the vote due to voter apathy. Perhaps something similar will happen here and it will be enough to get through to the politicians that they have to start addressing these issues.

[Steven]

I think there is a chance that Wilders has made the worm glance about a bit. There is tension running underneath the sitation the people of the UK find themselves in. I honestly don't know anyone who isn't fed-up to the back teeth with political correctness, crazy health and safety laws and the apparent denigration of Christianity and all things 'British', by the powers-that-be.

Even one or two of the Labour frontbenchers are aware that there is support for the BNP in their own constituencies. Though they are only concerned about holding onto their seats rather than anything else.

Maybe there will be protest votes - enough to create a few BNP councillors at local level. Who knows - perhaps even an MP or two in certain areas. I can remember the shock of the French election in which Jean-Marie Le Pen got a dangerous slice of the vote due to voter apathy. Perhaps something similar will happen here and it will be enough to get through to the politicians that they have to start addressing these issues.

I hope enough of you guys speak up. The politican who deals with the problem, might just not be known yet. He might have nothing to do with politics yet, but I am sure that someone will rise up. Maybe a football hooligan.:p



Here is a good one for you. I was just reading Robert Spencer's new book Stealth Jihad. There is plenty of catering going on the Muslims here too. Recently the Ridgeland School District in Illinois banned Jello-O, all because there is pork in it.

1.How come this was never done for Jews?
2.No one was forcing Muslims to eat it.
3.Not a PEEP from the so called "moderates". They do not stand up and say that their religion does not have to include non-Muslims. "Moderate" Muslims are not coming to the rescue. We need to worry about our own families future generations.

[Sharona]

The football hooligan is a dying breed - thank heavens!

I don't know what the answer is, Steven. Perhaps the European elections this June will have some effect. People voting for UKIP will send an anti-Europe message to Westminster.

[Sharona]

The point you make about Jell-O (what is that?) is interesting. Is it the 'do-gooders' behind that? The adminstrations, acting out of their own liberal self-righteousness, or is it the parents?

As mentioned, for sure those who act on behalf of others, without asking them first, need to be included in this equation.

[Steven]

The point you make about Jell-O (what is that?) is interesting. Is it the 'do-gooders' behind that? The adminstrations, acting out of their own liberal self-righteousness, or is it the parents?

As mentioned, for sure those who act on behalf of others, without asking them first, need to be included in this equation.

That one was done by the do gooders. It was the school administration, that panned ALL pork products in 5 schools. But Muslims are requesting a lot also. Like foot washing basins be funded by taxpayers money. Some are even being allowed off the hook on interest back taxes. As they are writing it is un-Islamic on the tax forms. It was a HUGE mistake to even allow Islam to be practiced here in the first place.

One thing that is not happening, is that Muslims are not turning down anything. They have shown no concern for anyone else, just like in the UK.

[maven]

This clip explains the Islamist agenda that informed the banning of Geert Wilders from the UK and which has now been incorporated into British thought:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otpUIMI2Pg4

[kozzol]

There is a growing petition on Facebook which I have just found against Lord Ahmed.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52193678138#

[Mediocrates]

http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/3247

[kozzol]

Maajid Nawas during this debate is exactly what you expect a British 21st century moslem should be. He made it very clear that he as a British subject was denied his right of freedom of speech, by Geert Wilders being banned and not being able to debate the subjects raised in the film 'Fitna'.

A good link.

[maven]

Lord Ahmed, anti-Jewish statements + how he stopped Geert Wilders from showing his film through threats and intimidation + he pressured to stop an Israeli general from coming to Britain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxS2LvAv0Z0

[kozzol]

He is has also suggested when in debate with Lord Pearson that War Crimes have been committed in Iraq and Afghanistan so lets see if they attempt to have any British Military personel charged.

I would love it if they did try as it would be the final nail in Islams coffin in the UK.

[Steven]

There is a growing petition on Facebook which I have just found against Lord Ahmed.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52193678138#

Thanks for the good news.

[CLL1709]

Exactly, it is more of a political movement than a religion.

Are the Saudis really talking about trying to get the Bible banned there? If you have a link please post it.

France does not allow any foreign funding for Mosques (probably all houses of worship).

Steven, my niece, a USAF officer was briefly stationed at Prince Sultan, our base in SA and she did not even leave the air base, and being a practicing Christian did so. The Christian Bible or any other religious text are allowed in that pathetic country.

[Steven]

Steven, my niece, a USAF officer was briefly stationed at Prince Sultan, our base in SA and she did not even leave the air base, and being a practicing Christian did so. The Christian Bible or any other religious text are allowed in that pathetic country.

I think that you forgot the word "not". :p

[Sharona]

Did anyone see 'Panorama', tonight?

A first step perhaps in the Government acknowledging that their advisors have been talking nonsense.

The advice given appears to have been to allow and support clerics that they know full well are extremists - but are anti-terror. In other words, to focus only on the 'terror' element.

However, what they have overlooked - and again, do you really need even Psychology 101 to figure this out - that those preachers have been allowed to influence young people against Britian. They've said that Islam is not compatible with democracy; that their 'brothers' around the world - and British Muslims themselves - are 'supressed' and 'victims'; courtesy of the UK. They've influenced them to bear grudges. They might just as well have handed these young people over to Hamas, such is the poison they are placing in their minds. And of course, the more they feel victims, riot and bear their 'death to the Kuffar'-type placards, the more they are disliked and not trusted. Especially as we really have bent over backwards to be accommodating. It's like having it all flung back in your face. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

The program showed a communication from one advisor who said he longed for the UK to be Islamic and hoped the leader would be 'X' (because I've forgotten his name). He is a Hammas leader. Some advisor:scratch:

Ahmed was interviewed - briefly. You'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Given his subsequent behaviour, I fail to see how he can be considered trustworthy.

So now the Government are aware that they've only been addressing one aspect of the problem - 'terror'. How they will now go about sorting it all out remains to be seen.

[Rob]

Bottom line:

Looking through all the smoke screens of accusing Geert Wilders blatanly wrong of being a nazi, antisemite, racist etc. this is what happened:

An UK member of parlament invited an elected member of parlament of a friendly nation which was cancelled after the UK gave in to Muslims threats.

[kozzol]

I think that Geert Wilders 'Fitna' topped with the Gaza demonstrations, Lord Ahmeds threats and the hate speeches from Islamic clerics, then on top of all this what is actually going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan are finally waking up the powers that be.

There will be sweeping changes if the Goverment feel that Islam is now threatening its very exsistence and I believe that this has finally sunk in.

[Aviva]

Did anyone see 'Panorama', tonight?

A first step perhaps in the Government acknowledging that their advisors have been talking nonsense.

The advice given appears to have been to allow and support clerics that they know full well are extremists - but are anti-terror. In other words, to focus only on the 'terror' element.

However, what they have overlooked - and again, do you really need even Psychology 101 to figure this out - that those preachers have been allowed to influence young people against Britian. They've said that Islam is not compatible with democracy; that their 'brothers' around the world - and British Muslims themselves - are 'supressed' and 'victims'; courtesy of the UK. They've influenced them to bear grudges. They might just as well have handed these young people over to Hamas, such is the poison they are placing in their minds. And of course, the more they feel victims, riot and bear their 'death to the Kuffar'-type placards, the more they are disliked and not trusted. Especially as we really have bent over backwards to be accommodating. It's like having it all flung back in your face. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

The program showed a communication from one advisor who said he longed for the UK to be Islamic and hoped the leader would be 'X' (because I've forgotten his name). He is a Hammas leader. Some advisor:scratch:

Ahmed was interviewed - briefly. You'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Given his subsequent behaviour, I fail to see how he can be considered trustworthy.

So now the Government are aware that they've only been addressing one aspect of the problem - 'terror'. How they will now go about sorting it all out remains to be seen.

I watched it too and was amazed that police are only concentrating on the terror element. The rejection of British law, values, democracy should be considered treason, in my opinion, and new laws should be passed to come down heavily on this attitude.

I'm wondering if it's too late for the UK, though. How can they have a zero tolerance approach to the ideology connected with terrorism now when Muslims believe they have the right to behave however they like?

[Sharona]

To be honest, watching Panorama last night and hearing about the 'advice' the 'advisors' have been given was a jaw-dropping experience.

Thinking about the tax-payers money going to support these extremists and the 'advisors' makes me angry.

I'm shocked by the sheer lunacy of a government that actually believed the strategy was viable. As I said, you don't need a degree in psychology to see that it was a dangerous, one-sided approach. Common sense would have done the job.

But then, as they say - the trouble with common sense is that it ain't so common!

I don't know whether recent events were the driving force behind this program. Generally speaking, investigative reports take a long time to produce so this was probably in the pipeline before Gaza.

I have no idea how the Government are going to reverse the situation, either. I know you've got to begin somewhere but I anticipate problems arising when extremists are targeted.

[Aviva]

The government was probably taking a softly-softly approach because there are over two million Muslims in this country, all of who have votes and most of whom would support a Labour government. There is already a lot of complaints about Islamophobia, and victimisation, which the UK bleeding heart lefties would blindly champion too. The government has to pander to it's electorate.

I'm beginning to think that this situation will have to get much worse if it's going to get better. There will have to be another huge terrorist atrocity to change attitudes in the UK.

[Sharona]

Agreed.

We need to address the 'victim'-type culture the 'advisors' have created. It rarely addresses real victims but seems to create false ones.

Young Muslim men and women should open their eyes to the lives they are able to live in the UK - as opposed to the life their parents left behind.

It is interesting to note that the parents aren't the ones rioting - it's their offspring who are more indoctrinated than they ever were, despite the welfare state benefits that they enjoy.

A six-month stay in an AIDS-stricken, African village, living as the villagers live might help them to appreciate what they've got. It would be a better use of tax-payers money than these 'advisors'.

[Mediocrates]

Perhaps it's time for autonomous zones. Give over regions to fundamentalists and let them erect whatever laws they like. Much like Pakistan is slowly giving up to the Taliban and allowing the NW provinces to institute Taliban directed Sharia as the law of the land. Fundamentalist Autonomous Zones in the UK would at least draw a boundary between you and them. In the end they would tend to withdraw from political life in the UK.

[Sharona]

It wouldn't work because the extremist aim isn't autonomy in a region, but autonomy of the UK/West.

I've heard enough of the extremist clerics speak to feel reasonably secure in my statement.

I watched one in a TV debate with 'Intellectuals'. His view of the Uk was that we are all decadent and immoral. The intellectuals asked him why he chose to continue milking the benefits system of such a corrupt country and also why he didn't just leave. His angry reply was that we don't own the UK, Allah does, and therefore he was entitled to stay - indeed, it was important that he did in order to be a part of our downfall.

Besides which, this is a tiny country and the Muslim communities are already almost exclusively Muslim. There are very few non-Muslims living in them.

[ranchcer]

We heard Wilders' populist inflammatory rethoric in the mouths of others before him. He uses the same opportunistic tactics to promote his hate trade, bashing Muslims, Jews, communists, gays and others..who cares? Thank you. not in my name :tdown:
No matter how embarrassing the Koran may well be to a non-retarded half civilized person,
reforms will just have to come from within.

[bararallu]

communists = fascists

[Steven]

We heard Wilders' populist inflammatory rethoric in the mouths of others before him. He uses the same opportunistic tactics to promote his hate trade, bashing Muslims, Jews, communists, gays and others..who cares? Thank you. not in my name :tdown:
No matter how embarrassing the Koran may well be to a non-retarded half civilized person,
reforms will just have to come from within.

He is basically the only person in Europe who has the guts to stand up to Islam and here you are bashing him.:tdown: Great idea, oppose anyone who stands up and just sit there and surrender to Islam.:tdown:

Obviously you did not notice that reforms are not coming and things are getting worse and worse. But you wait around as they slowly take over Europe. Maybe Mr. Nice Guy will come around and fight Islam. Some Europeans are still in shell shock from the last war there. Get over it and face the threat of today. The threat is not Wilders.

[ranchcer]

He is basically the only person in Europe who has the guts to stand up to Islam and here you are bashing him.:tdown: Great idea, oppose anyone who stands up and just sit there and surrender to Islam.:tdown:

Obviously you did not notice that reforms are not coming and things are getting worse and worse. But you wait around as they slowly take over Europe. Maybe Mr. Nice Guy will come around and fight Islam. Some Europeans are still in shell shock from the last war there. Get over it and face the threat of today. The threat is not Wilders.

Ouch..impredictable Steven..You make me feel like an elderly Berliner queuing up for a chocolate bar on monday morning.:rofl:
All jokes aside, i respectfully disagree with your choice of Crusader in Chief for an all out war against Islam. This is no walk in the woods. In my view, Wilders lacks the political stature to take up such an assigment. As you rightfully pointed out he is the first one to come along and willing. from what i could see he couldnt even make it across the English Channel:D
Far Right-wing politician do not have to be hateful.
look at Lieberman. European newpapers fall on top of one another to have him interviewed
he is not perceived as a hate preacher. plays the russian patriotic card, keeps it all in a political context..means Business. and that goes down well:clap:
As for your suggestion that one is sitting back watching the worl goes by, let me point out that efforts and sacrifices are made to keep in check the rise of radical Islam. Everyone stays focused, our laws are tightened, our civil liberties curtailed and so on. In other words we are in for the long haul. no short cut here:unsure:

[ranchcer]

communists = fascists

yes right. I meant communists with juvenile acnea;)

[Sharona]

We heard Wilders' populist inflammatory rethoric in the mouths of others before him. He uses the same opportunistic tactics to promote his hate trade, bashing Muslims, Jews, communists, gays and others..who cares? Thank you. not in my name :tdown:
No matter how embarrassing the Koran may well be to a non-retarded half civilized person,
reforms will just have to come from within.

I agree with the general thrust of your post, Rancher, and would add that the argument in the UK in favour of Wilders was more to do with Ahmed than Wilders himself. Wilders had been in the UK five weeks earlier. His views clearly were no different then yet he was allowed in. Ahmed's threats appeared to create the ban; one unelected man should not have that kind of power. Also, Ahmed has himself issued invitations to characters with more extreme views than Wilders. He also appears to have some unwholesome connections. So, along with the threats, there was his hypocrasy.

That said, we do need a bit of straight-talking about the radicals and their effects. Such an ability has been lost amid political correctness, and, as you say, the loss of too many civil liberties.

The problem has worsened over the last few years and perhaps Wilders voice has created a wake-up call.

No one would wish to see harm come to anyone, but we have to have the debate soon.

[Y. Shulamith]

Oft times, the person who makes the first "wake-up" call is pilliored for bringing the message when it's not a good one.

Sort of like "killing the messenger as it were"....people everywhere should listen to the wake-up call and march to the music that is being played and stop putting "heads in the ground, like ostriches"....sorry for all the trite sayings, but they are the truth and sometimes the truth hurts.

:rock:

[andak01]

Oft times, the person who makes the first "wake-up" call is pilliored for bringing the message when it's not a good one.

Then again, sometimes people heed the "wake up" call immediately and that leads to a bunch of broken glass and burnt books. Amazing coincidence how many of the ultra-right wing xenophobic groups have ties to the neo-Nazi movement.

[bararallu]

Then again, sometimes people heed the "wake up" call immediately and that leads to a bunch of broken glass and burnt books. Amazing coincidence how many of the ultra-right wing xenophobic groups have ties to the neo-Nazi movement.

Correct and the way that will arrive is from the radicalization, and reaction, enabled by the Left and Islamists. Europe is especially given to that scenario.

[Sharona]

This is getting a little frustrating - veering off to extremes.

What happens if we DON'T have the discussion? What happens if the radicalisation of many more young people occurs? What happens if we do zippo about it all?

Do you honestly think that avoiding a debate will make it all peace and love?

I would say that the reverse of 'peace and love' is going to happen and that's when extreme things will occur that none of us in our right minds want to see happen - again.

[kozzol]

Then again, sometimes people heed the "wake up" call immediately and that leads to a bunch of broken glass and burnt books. Amazing coincidence how many of the ultra-right wing xenophobic groups have ties to the neo-Nazi movement.

Also amazing how many of the so called peaceful moslems are harbouring exactly the same thoughts as the neo-nazi's, but with a bigger agenda towards all infidels who do not submit to their Allah and their religion.

As we are now seeing within the UK there would be plenty of broken glass and burnt books if the moslems had their way, but for the grace of the British and American intelligence.

[Y. Shulamith]

Who are terrorists and who are the freedom fighters? I know the difference and I know who the Islamofascists are and I can tell the difference between them and "freedom fighters".

The thugs and terrorists are the Islamofascists everywhere and everyplace they make their agenda part of a "normal" society and corrupt a fair and decent people, no matter where they got to and how they got there; they are guests in another nation that has been "taken over" by the evils of Islam, for their own devise.

I am hopeful that citizens of the USA will see it for what it is and not let this kind of "political correctness" prevail over to our shores.

[maven]

I always thought that Geert Wilders looked too blatantly white to be allowed into the UK. :rofl:

[Mediocrates]

The Culture War that dare not speak its name
The Geert Wilders affair exposes an elite more interested in battling imaginary Islamofascists or Islamophobes than having an enlightened debate.
Brendan O’Neill

So, what is the greatest threat in twenty-first-century Europe?
Is it ‘Islamofascism’, as the Dutch filmmaker and MP Geert Wilders, who was excluded from Britain last week, would have us believe? The rising Muslim birth rate, the influx of radical Islamic preachers from ‘over there’, the free availability of an allegedly evil holy book – the Koran – which Wilders describes as being ‘like Mein Kampf’? Or is it, as Wilders’ critics and censors argue, ‘Islamophobia’? Not Islam itself, or its extreme adherents, but those who fear and loathe Islam, those who are intolerant of difference and multiculturalism and who might be inspired to join an anti-Muslim pogrom upon watching something like Wilders’ 17-minute, Islam-baiting film Fitna?

It’s neither. Europe is not threatened by ‘Islamofascism’ (there’s no such thing) or ‘Islamophobia’ (which is vastly exaggerated). Instead, the greatest threat in modern-day Europe to freedom and genuine debate – even to security – is the elite’s own Islamo-obsession. It is the tendency of both the left and right to view every major issue through Islamo-goggles – from peace to free speech, community relations to migration policies – that is denigrating liberty, obscuring truth in public debate, and potentially nurturing separatist and even violent tendencies. The Geert Wilders affair reveals that we are living through a Culture War that dare not speak its name, where thinkers, politicians and officials put the case for progress or tradition, Western civilisation or censorship, not openly and honestly, but under the cover of various Islamo-nightmares.

The British authorities’ refusal to allow Wilders entry into the UK, where he had been invited to show his film Fitna to some peers at the House of Lords, marked a new low in censorship. Whatever you think of Wilders’ film (I think it’s shrill, hysterical, repetitive and badly made) or Wilders himself (his deeply entrenched hatred of Islam is enough to make even a critic of the therapy culture like me wonder if he was perhaps interfered with by a bearded man when he was a toddler), he should have been free to come here and make his case. Just as others should have been free to argue or protest against him. In blocking Wilders from Britain – on the basis that his presence would ‘threaten community harmony and therefore public security’ (1) – the British authorities did not only irritate an elected MP from Holland; they also profoundly insulted us, the British and European public.

Wilders was excluded on the deeply censorious basis that words and images are toxic, damaging, even potentially lethal, and therefore we, the public, must be protected from them by any means necessary. Such an outlook has guided every censor in history, from Torquemada (who, with ‘excessive rigour’, burnt at the stake those heretics whose beliefs threatened Christian stability) to Joseph McCarthy (who thought that the ideas harboured by Reds Under The Bed threatened America’s ‘social fabric’) (2). Today they say ‘community harmony’ instead of ‘social fabric’ or ‘Christian orthodoxy’. Justifying the exclusion of Wilders, UK foreign secretary David Miliband said: ‘We have a profound commitment to freedom of speech but there is no freedom to cry “fire” in a crowded theatre.’ In his reliance on that cliché – which has been so warped over time, transformed from a libertarian defence of all but the most directly inciting forms of speech into a casual justification for everyday censorship – Miliband revealed how New Labour views the public: as volatile, unpredictable, irrational, for whom seeing a controversial film is the equivalent of hearing ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre, in the sense that it might generate screaming, scrambling and stampeding.

The banning of Wilders from Britain was motivated by the axis of prejudices that always underpins censorship. First by the idea that the public is incapable of dealing with difficult or dodgy ideas, and instead hears only ‘fire!’ or ‘panic!’ or ‘kill, kill, kill!’ when it encounters inflammatory material. Second by the idea that there is some abstract greater good – ‘social fabric’, ‘public security’ or ‘community harmony’ – that must be guarded from the pollution of dangerous ideas. And third by the notion that it is the job of the authorities to decide what is appropriate and inappropriate material for public consumption and to airbrush from Britain any thinking judged too pernicious or poisonous. New Labour now polices the borders not only to keep out the ‘wrong’ people but also the ‘wrong’ ideas. The Wilders affair has set a very dangerous precedent. A Miliband-designed Thought Forcefield has been erected around the country. Britain is a little more unfree following last week’s Wilders exclusion.

The Wilders affair was also striking because it revealed one of the key divides in European public debate today: that between anti-Islamofascists like Wilders, who believe Islamic extremism threatens our civilisation, and anti-Islamophobes, who believe that intolerance of Islam threatens social harmony. More and more thinkers and officials are signing up to the Great Islamo-Divide. On one side stand the vast bulk of the old left and liberal commentators, and much of Western European officialdom, who claim that Islamophobia is on the rise and Europe is threatened by a wave of hatred and intolerance which all good democrats must resist. New Labour’s banning of Wilders was part of this trend. On the other side stands a band of conservative commentators and politicians, joined by a small but apparently brave group of pro-Enlightenment left-wing thinkers, who believe that Islamofascism is the darkest threat to European values and civilisation. Some refer to this as an ‘anti-Islamist intelligentsia’ which defends secular democracy against the ‘medieval ideology’ of the Islamists (3). Wilders’ film is part of this trend.

Sounds exciting, right: a good old-fashioned religious-political-culture war, upon which, according to one commentator, ‘the fate of the free world rests’? It’s certainly a bit more goosebump-inducing than the shallow politics of personality that has dominated much of Europe for the past 10 years. Don’t get too excited, however. The Wilders affair also shows that today’s Great Islamo-Divide is a shrill and shallow thing, a pantomime clash underpinned by myth and misinformation, which has spread, blob-like, into the politics-shaped hole at the heart of modern Europe.

For all their seemingly screaming differences of opinion, where both camps accuse each other of being ‘fascists’ and ‘Holocaust-mongers’, the most striking thing is how much the anti-Islamofascists and anti-Islamophobes have in common. Both are driven by the politics of fear. Both vastly exaggerate their pet threats to Europe. The left-leaning and liberal anti-Islamophobes claim there is an ‘orgy of Islamophobia’ in Europe, and even that Muslims in Britain are ‘subject to attacks reminiscent of the gathering storm of anti-Semitism in the first decades of the last century’ (4). This is simply untrue. The evidence suggests there are a very small number of prejudicial attacks on Muslims in Western Europe. In Britain in the year after 7/7, for example, when the authorities predicted there would be an upsurge in anti-Muslim fury, there were only 43 cases of religiously aggravated crime, 18 of them against Muslims (or ‘perceived Muslims’). This represented a decline from 23 anti-Muslim crimes in 2004-2005 (5). There is no impending Kristallnacht against Muslims. Instead, claims of widespread Islamophobia are being spread and exploited by the authorities to justify tougher interventions into working-class areas of Britain in particular, where more policing is apparently needed to keep the baying mob and the victimised Muslims apart.

[Mediocrates]

On the flipside, the anti-Islamofascists vastly exaggerate the threat posed by Islamic radicalism. You can see it in their use of the f-word – fascism – as if ragtag collections of Islamic nihilists are somehow comparable to the Nazis. Amongst the anti-Islamofascist brigade in Britain, there has been some embarrassment over Wilders’ comparison of the Koran to Mein Kampf, yet this is only the brute logical conclusion to recent claims by respectable ‘pro-Enlightenment’ commentators that radical Islam is ‘the most psychopathically anti-liberal ideology since Nazism’ (6).

Wilders even argues that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’; it’s all extreme, and it’s all threatening. In truth, as David Cook argued in his book Understanding Jihad, perhaps the most striking thing about contemporary violent Islamism is its inability to recruit large numbers: ‘The fact that the majority of contemporary Muslims do not actively participate in jihad demonstrates a decisive rejection of which the radical Muslims are keenly aware.’ (7) We do not live in a new ‘age of terror’. Terror attacks have fallen over the past 30 years. In the Eighties, there was an average of 360 international terror incidents worldwide each year; by 2000 it had fallen to just 100. In Western Europe, the number of such attacks fell from 200 in the mid-Eighties to under 30 in 2004; in the US, it fell from more than 40 a year in the mid-Seventies to under five every year from the mid-Nineties onwards (8).

Both sides of the Great Islamo-Divide are also deeply censorious. The anti-Islamophobes call for the censoring or exclusion of anyone who harshly criticises Islam. They even pathologise political debate, presenting any attacks on Islam as a form of ‘phobia’, a kind of irrational fear or mental disorder. The end result is the UK government’s Religious Hatred legislation, which, in a flagrant attack on the hard-won right in our secular society to speak out against superstition, makes it a crime to ridicule or offend Islam and other religions. On the other side, the anti-Islamofascists call for the exclusion from Britain of radical Islamic preachers. They argue that speech can give rise to terrorism. The end result is a British law that criminalises the ‘glorification of terrorism’, or anyone seen to be ‘attacking the values of the West’, as the Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer said when asked to elucidate on the matter. This further circumscribes what is acceptable and unacceptable political speech (9).

Both sides of the Great Islamo-Divide also share a profound inability to justify their political outlooks on their own terms. So instead they dress up their concerns, their beliefs, their desires in Islamo-garb. The anti-Islamophobia movement, from officialdom downwards, is driven by a powerful feeling that society is spinning out of control, that there is a growing lack of respect for the institutions and ideas of authority. But instead of seeking to inspire people with new ideas, or work out how to constitute a future-oriented vision for society, it seeks to dampen down the public’s allegedly out-of-control emotions, to curtail and control our speech, and to police more closely our everyday interactions. And, increasingly, it does this under the convenient cover of fighting Islamophobia. The anti-Islamofascists, meanwhile, are worried that Enlightenment values such as universalism, rationalism and Truth are being undermined. Yet rather than seek out and critique the homegrown origins of today’s anti-Enlightenment, they launch a fantasy war against Islamofascists who are allegedly working to ‘destroy Western civilisation’ (10). This is a Culture War that dare not speak its name, where instead of openly and honestly debating the values that should define the twenty-first century, commentators on both the left and right wage war against imaginary armies of Islamophobes or Islamofascists.

The irony is that it is this widespread and dishonest Islamo-obsession amongst the political and cultural elites that is most likely sustaining radical Islam in Europe today. The anti-Islamophobia industry can be seen as providing some alienated young Muslims with the narcissistic victim mentality required to indulge violent fantasies or launch a terror tantrum. And the end-of-days handwringing of the anti-Islamofascists might give some of them the fanciful idea that they are engaged in a ‘clerical war’ against the West that is rattling the ‘whole free world’. To the extent that Islamic terror exists in Europe today, it increasingly looks like a performance, with the script and the costumes provided by the Islamo-obsessives who rule over us.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here (http://www.brendanoneill.co.uk/). His satire on the green movement - Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder & Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340955651/spiked).)

Previously on spiked
Nathalie Rothschild thought trying to keep anyone with dubious political views out of the UK was impractical and illiberal (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5871/). Brendan O’Neill interviewed both sides in the debate about banning homophobic Jamaican music (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1998/) and wondered whether Abu Izzadeen was guilty of the crime of talking bollocks (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4999). Amir Butler suggested Britain avoid the Australian error of trying to legislate against hate (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/767/). Josie Appleton thought deporting clerics would solve nothing (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/701/). Rob Lyons asked Who’s afraid of Snoop Dogg? (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3010/). Or read more at spiked issues Free speech (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/issues/C19/).

(1) Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders barred from UK over anti-Islam film (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5709892.ece), The Times (London), 1 February 2009
(2) The Legacy of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, by Ellen Schrecker
(3) The new anti-Islamist intelligentsia (http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/27540/the-new-antiislamist-intelligentsia.thtml), Michael Gove, Spectator, 27 January 2007
(4) Muslims need to take part (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1976590,00.html), Guardian, 21 December 2006
(5) See Time for a backlash against the hate-obsessed state? (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2271/), by Brendan O’Neill
(6) p29, Waiting for the Etonians, Nick Cohen, 2009
(7) Understanding Jihad, by David Cook, University of California Press, 2005
(8) The good news about terrorism (http://www.antiwar.com/spectator2/spec619.html), Spectator, 2 April 2005
(9) See See Defend free speech now more than ever (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/797/), by Mick Hume
(10) Britain capitulates to terror (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3344161/britain-capitulates-to-terror.thtml), Melanie Phillips, Spectator, 11 February 2009
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6216/

[Yala]

US senator hosts anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker
Republican Jon Kyl sponsoring screening of Geert Wilders' film, says 'all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered'
Associated Press
Published: 02.24.09, 09:39 / Israel News

Kyl is sponsoring the Thursday event for Geert Wilders, who was denied entry to London earlier this month because British officials said he posed a threat to public order.

Wilders' 15-minute film juxtaposes verses from the Quran with images of violence by Muslims. Wilders has called the Quran a "fascist book" and said it should be banned.

Kyl agreed to facilitate the event because "all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered," said spokesman Ryan Patmintra.

Thursday's event was being sponsored by the International Free Press Society, headed by Danish activist Lars Hedegaard, and the Center for Security Policy, a think tank in Washington led by Republican Frank Gaffney.

The event is closed to the public and the media, but the film is being offered to members of Congress and their staff in the ornate "LBJ room," a Senate office once used by President Lyndon B. Johnson when he was majority leader and later vice president.
...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3676607,00.html

[Steven]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3676607,00.html

Finally a politician with some guts. :clap:

[Rob]

Finally a politician with some guts. :clap:

Talking about guts. This is what he is fighting:

481

[Steven]

Talking about guts. This is what he is fighting:

481

I can't view that. Is that the one with the dead Israeli soldier?

Brave Wilders called for an end to Muslim immigration. This is not an imaginary threat. This is a battle for life as we know it for our families future generations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88blBiWV8AY&eurl=http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/

[Rob]

I can't view that. Is that the one with the dead Israeli soldier?

Thats Muslims parading the liver and other organs of a lynched Israeli.


Brave Wilders called for an end to Muslim immigration. This is not an imaginary threat. This is a battle for life as we know it for our families future generations.

It sure is. Mind you though he also wants to abolish article one of the Dutch constitution, which says everybody is equal and forbids discrimination. This is not why the Dutch fought for indepedence against the Spanish inquisition and the Dutch resistance fought the nazi´s.

[Steven]

Thats Muslims parading the liver and other organs of a lynched Israeli.

That is what I thought. Disgusting, but those in the picture were in their glory.

It sure is. Mind you though he also wants to abolish article one of the Dutch constitution, which says everybody is equal and forbids discrimination. This is not why the Dutch fought for indepedence against the Spanish inquisition and the Dutch resistance fought the nazi´s.

I understand, but some laws are going to have to be changed for now and can be changed back later. This is a direct result of Muslims using our freedoms against us. Either we treat them differently or eventually we will lose to them, as they will never stop pushing. The status quo doe not work. Your updates are appreciated. :)

[bararallu]

[B]I understand, but some laws are going to have to be changed for now and can be changed back later.

Steve,

It just doesnt jive with human nature. Do you think w/o revolution the laws will be changed back in Venezuela that just elected to have a dictator? Once the laws were changed (through democratic elections etc) in Russia and Iran... they never changed back. There are people who are too happy to take advantage of these laws and install any sort of autocracy, both secular and religious.

[Steven]

Steve,

It just doesnt jive with human nature. Do you think w/o revolution the laws will be changed back in Venezuela that just elected to have a dictator? Once the laws were changed (through democratic elections etc) in Russia and Iran... they never changed back. There are people who are too happy to take advantage of these laws and install any sort of autocracy, both secular and religious.

I understand your point, but if things do not change I believe that the West will eventually lose this war. As Islamos will just continue to use the system against us. I would rather limit their freedoms then them limiting ours.

[kozzol]

It sure is. Mind you though he also wants to abolish article one of the Dutch constitution, which says everybody is equal and forbids discrimination.

The only problem with that is where will it end? If he got into power he would use it against the moslems, but then some one else takes power and uses it against the Jews etc etc.

I dont thing to abolish that article of the Dutch constitution a good idea.

[Steven]

The only problem with that is where will it end? If he got into power he would use it against the moslems, but then some one else takes power and uses it against the Jews etc etc.

I dont thing to abolish that article of the Dutch constitution a good idea.

Here is what I would do.

1.End Muslim immigration.
2.Make sharia law illegal.
3.Make it clear that anyone who wants sharia in the West is the enemy of the country.
4.If they continue to call for sharia they need to be arrested and or deported if possible.

What is being done now is clearly not working.

[Y. Shulamith]

Here is what I would do.

1.End Muslim immigration.
2.Make sharia law illegal.
3.Make it clear that anyone who wants sharia in the West is the enemy of the country.
4.If they continue to call for sharia they need to be arrested and or deported if possible.

What is being done now is clearly not working.

I'd be very happy to see this policy in the USA; I'd like to see any Muslim convicted of a crime, of any kind, and not born in the USA deported along with all family members not born in the USA.

As a matter of fact, I'd like to see all foreign born criminals deported...I'm tired of having our $$$ wasted on locking these pests up.....:stick:

[Steven]

I'd be very happy to see this policy in the USA; I'd like to see any Muslim convicted of a crime, of any kind, and not born in the USA deported along with all family members not born in the USA.

As a matter of fact, I'd like to see all foreign born criminals deported...I'm tired of having our $$$ wasted on locking these pests up.....:stick:

Yes, lets add your idea to the list as well.:cool:

[Mediocrates]

You can't deport US citizens.

[kozzol]

why not? :)

[Y. Shulamith]

You can't deport US citizens.


Maybe this is an idea whose time has come and perhaps the laws should be amended, for the good of society.

Maybe there needs to be a different law for criminals who are naturalized citizens.

*if pigs could fly*

[Steven]

You can't deport US citizens.

I know, that is why I said if possible. Like dual citizenship and maybe some laws need to be changed. Like if they were not born here but are clear cut sharia loving Islamists who have obtained citizenship. They need to be shipped back to where they originally came from came from.

[Mediocrates]

Maybe this is an idea whose time has come and perhaps the laws should be amended, for the good of society.

Maybe there needs to be a different law for criminals who are naturalized citizens.

*if pigs could fly*

Everyone who ever assassinated a US President was US born.

As far as I know the only national program (apart from the US presidency) that's ever required native born status was the South African atomic bomb program.

[Y. Shulamith]

Everyone who ever assassinated a US President was US born.

As far as I know the only national program (apart from the US presidency) that's ever required native born status was the South African atomic bomb program.


This may be is true, however, Sirhan B. Sirhan and his rendevous to murder Bobby Kennedy was a national tragedy.

[Sharona]

I can't say I'm in agreement with Wilders in respect of abolishing article One.
Removing equality and rights from a section of the community is loaded with opportunities for abuse.

I'm sure that there are existing laws to deal with aspects of the matter in question. The difficulties lie not in those laws, but in the nature of Islam which appears to be both religious and political. This is not in keeping with the Western approach of differentiating between State and religion and is allowing the extremists to use the existing law in a disingenuous manner.

As this is a fairly unique situation, the government - along with the modern, moderate Muslim community leaders and legal experts, need to brainstorm the situation and create new laws to match the current situation.

Or am I being overly simplistic / hopeful?:unsure:

[ranchcer]

I can't say I'm in agreement with Wilders in respect of abolishing article One.
Removing equality and rights from a section of the community is loaded with opportunities for abuse.

I'm sure that there are existing laws to deal with aspects of the matter in question. The difficulties lie not in those laws, but in the nature of Islam which appears to be both religious and political. This is not in keeping with the Western approach of differentiating between State and religion and is allowing the extremists to use the existing law in a disingenuous manner.

As this is a fairly unique situation, the government - along with the modern, moderate Muslim community leaders and legal experts, need to brainstorm the situation and create new laws to match the current situation.

Or am I being overly simplistic / hopeful?:unsure:

I agree with you Sharona.
Besides, an ethnic background or a place of birth is merely coincidential and shouldn't affect a Law-abiding citizen's right to equal opportunities.
Our Laws facilitate social harmony and peaceful coexistence (interesting euphemism nowdays), in our democratic and pluricultural society.
It is the individual's responsability to exercise his right to Freedom of speech within the boundaries of the Law.
Incitement to violence and racial hatred is a crime, a felony which deserves no complacency. Furthermore, it results in a loss of credibility for his author which can invalidate a would be legitimate argument brougt to public debate.
ie Who believes Ahmadineyad when he says that he needs nuclear energy to switch lights on, once he has vowed to wipe out the Jewish State??:(

[Sharona]

Who believes Ahmadineyad when he says that he needs nuclear energy to switch lights on, once he has vowed to wipe out the Jewish State??:(


Or where he appears to unofficially validate / hint at it after having his 'mystical experience' at a UN meeting.:unsure:

Ahmadinejad believes himself to be instrumental in the return of the Imam Mahdi and has set up news agencies and telephone hotlines for the latest 'development' in a return which he says will trigger a global battle (an Armaggedon, in fact).

I wouldn't let the man near anything more than a water pistol.

[maven]

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Jon Kyl is hosting a film screening at the Capitol building on Thursday for a far-right Dutch lawmaker who claims that Islam inspires terrorism.


Kyl agreed to facilitate the event because "all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered," said spokesman Ryan Patmintra.

Thursday’s event was being sponsored by the International Free Press Society, headed by Danish activist Lars Hedegaard, and the Center for Security Policy, a think tank in Washington led by Republican Frank Gaffney.

The event is closed to the public and press, but the film is being shown to members of Congress and their staff in the ornate "LBJ room," a Senate office once used by Lyndon B. Johnson as majority leader and later vice president.

Wilders’ film has sparked protests around the world, as well as inspired a debate on the freedom of speech. The lawmaker had been invited to Britain by a member of Parliament’s upper house, the House of Lords, to show his film. But the British government refused Wilders entry into the country, saying he posed a threat to "community harmony."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Wilders was guilty of "extreme anti-Muslim hate." He said "there is no freedom to stir up racial and religious hatred."

Hedegaard, who helped sponsor Wilders’ visit to the U.S., said Europe’s hate speech and blasphemy laws do not make any sense.

"The way to deal with controversial, offensive or even hateful statements — unless they are directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action — is to expose them to public debate and criticism," Hedegaard said in a statement advertising Thursday’s event.

While it is unusual for U.S. lawmakers to grant Capitol access to such a controversial figure, it was unlikely Wilders’ appearance would produce the same outcry as it did in Britain.

Continued:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view/2009_02_23_US_lawmaker_hosts_anti-Islamic_Dutch_lawmaker/

David Milliband, Is that the best excusae for a foreign secretary Britain can produce? But with the worst Prime Minister in living history what do you expect?

[Sharona]

David Milliband, Is that the best excusae for a foreign secretary Britain can produce? But with the worst Prime Minister in living history what do you expect?

Well, quite, Maven.

The problem is that Mr Miliband et al, have not quite got their finger on the pulse here.

They are failing to understand that, due to political correctness, the erosion of civil liberties and the supression of British culture - in apparent favour of minority groups - the British public are getting very uptight and restless.

Rather than have the correct type of honest and open debates where concerns are heard and changes to revert the UK back to the way the majority live are implemented (perhaps gradually), it seems to me that the government haven't a clue how to implement or run such debates. They've been overly-generous to one particular minority group and now don't know how to contain the situation that has arisen as a result. So, they are just shoving the British peoples' discontent into Pandora's box whilst simultaneously creating more laws in the hope of keeping it shut - a policy doomed to failure.

I well remember the old National Front and their ugliness. They were little more than Nazi thugs. Maggie Thatcher said that the way to beat them was through the ballot box - and she was right. I don't recall a NF councillor or MP strutting the real political stage. However, the British electorate clearly believe the situation in the UK to be worse than it was in the 80's because we now have the odd NF councillor - another recently elected in Kent which is a huge shock given that Kent seems to be more of a Tory homeland - and the likelihood of an NF MEP being elected in the coming European ballots.

So instead of beating the Neo-Nazi's through the ballot box, the situation is now such that people are turning to them. This is awful.:tdown: No matter what they prattle on the surface, their inner soul has not changed from the NF.

[maven]

Well, quite, Maven.

The problem is that Mr Miliband et al, have not quite got their finger on the pulse here.

They are failing to understand that, due to political correctness, the erosion of civil liberties and the supression of British culture - in apparent favour of minority groups - the British public are getting very uptight and restless.

Rather than have the correct type of honest and open debates where concerns are heard and changes to revert the UK back to the way the majority live are implemented (perhaps gradually), it seems to me that the government haven't a clue how to implement or run such debates. They've been overly-generous to one particular minority group and now don't know how to contain the situation that has arisen as a result. So, they are just shoving the British peoples' discontent into Pandora's box whilst simultaneously creating more laws in the hope of keeping it shut - a policy doomed to failure.

I well remember the old National Front and their ugliness. They were little more than Nazi thugs. Maggie Thatcher said that the way to beat them was through the ballot box - and she was right. I don't recall a NF councillor or MP strutting the real political stage. However, the British electorate clearly believe the situation in the UK to be worse than it was in the 80's because we now have the odd NF councillor - another recently elected in Kent which is a huge shock given that Kent seems to be more of a Tory homeland - and the likelihood of an NF MEP being elected in the coming European ballots.

So instead of beating the Neo-Nazi's through the ballot box, the situation is now such that people are turning to them. This is awful.:tdown: No matter what they prattle on the surface, their inner soul has not changed from the NF.The problem Sharona is that days after the British Government banned Geert Wilders from the UK it issued a statement regarding Holocaust denial (vis a vis the Bishop who holds to traditional pre-Vatican II Catholic dogma supporting hatred of Jews) saying (unfortunatly I could not locate the exact text) that Britain welcomes freedom of argument and considers that it is the best way to deal with contentious subjects.

I mean the sheer double-standards when it comes just to Muslims and Jews let alone the whole British population as a whole who feel that they are being beaten up by the Muslims with the support of their taxpayer pounds. The BNP is expected to make major gains in fortcoming elections as people run to the far right for protection from the center.

[Sharona]

I didn't know that, Maven.

It is almost tempting to view these double-standards as a conspiracy of sorts!

I know of many people who appear to hold liberal views but who, when you scratch the surface, are beginning to feel rather less than liberal. There is a sort of pretence going on under the radar because speaking the truth is uncomfortable in today's climate so people say what is socially acceptable. I suspect that as more and more people speak out, the pretence of many will fall away.

No one wants a far-right government and this is what the current lot appear unable to grasp; that we are moving nearer towards one with every passing year. But is it coming solely from our Government or has Europe got its sticky fingers in the pie?

Perhaps what we need is a shock - like the French had when Jean-Marie Le Pen made such gains. In that instance, voter apathy or complacency was the root cause, but it did open eyes with regard to the extent of French tolerance.

[maven]

I didn't know that, Maven.

It is almost tempting to view these double-standards as a conspiracy of sorts!

I know of many people who appear to hold liberal views but who, when you scratch the surface, are beginning to feel rather less than liberal. There is a sort of pretence going on under the radar because speaking the truth is uncomfortable in today's climate so people say what is socially acceptable. I suspect that as more and more people speak out, the pretence of many will fall away.

No one wants a far-right government and this is what the current lot appear unable to grasp; that we are moving nearer towards one with every passing year. But is it coming solely from our Government or has Europe got its sticky fingers in the pie?

Perhaps what we need is a shock - like the French had when Jean-Marie Le Pen made such gains. In that instance, voter apathy or complacency was the root cause, but it did open eyes with regard to the extent of French tolerance.Tell you what Sharona I'll give you two for the price of one on Brit double standards:

~Outrage as SOAS invites Hizbollah-linked speaker~

From The Jewish Chronicle
Marcus Dysch
February 19, 2009
Jewish groups have attacked plans to bring a Hizbollah-linked journalist to Britain for a conference on Islam.
Ibrahim Mousawi is expected to speak at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) (Maven: a training camp for terrorists in all but name!) next month, after a similar appearance in November.
He edits Lebanese newspaper Al Intiqad and previously worked for the Shi’ite TV station, Al Manar.
The Board of Deputies and the CST said that his presence would cause great concern to the Jewish community.


http://www.thejc.com/articles/outrage-soas-invites-hizbollah-linked-speaker

Any banning orders anyone? I mean the guy worked for Al Manar! How much hate-speech is ok for Muslims without being banned?

[Steven]

New NYC Geert Wilders video interview.

http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/02/geert-wilders-in-manhattan-interview.html

[Sharona]

I guess it now depends on our ability to rouse 10,000 rioting Jews, Maven:p

Preferably roused and led by one Lord.

I think I agree with Melanie Phillips who called the Board, 'spineless'. They need to be making some seriously big waves now.

[maven]

I guess it now depends on our ability to rouse 10,000 rioting Jews, Maven:p

Preferably roused and led by one Lord.

I think I agree with Melanie Phillips who called the Board, 'spineless'. They need to be making some seriously big waves now.If there was a conspiracy at least you would have something to aim at but it is the fuzzy thinking in the UK brought about by the confusion of a 'multi-cultural society' and the inability of the authorities to take an overview that means that there is no way for authorities to understand the way society is going.

For instance most councils are socialist, all parties including the Conservative party are steeped in socialist values. Britain is basically a socialist society. Socialism and Islamism are compatable in many ways in that they both look to American values and US foreign policy as if not evil and wrong then at least suspect.

What sort of Jewish family are the Millibands? As far as I know they are from a secular communist/socialist background.

Who are Brirish people more concerned about? The hundreds of Muslim girls who dissapear every year into forced marriages or the handful of 'British residents' who are in Guantanamo or Bagram Airbase?

Muslims are winning because their leaders act like threatening bullies, Jews are losing because they are a small defenceless community who know that if you don't keep your head down you are vulnerable. It is not relegious Jews who can protect the community but the intellectuals like Howard Jacobson and Melanie Phillips. Unfortunatly the media regard Melanie as they would regard an Islamist preacher; as a troublemaker.

The marriage in the East End in the 1930's between the Jews and socialists, which was understandable in facing a right-wing threat, has come back to haunt us big time. I may be wrong but as I understand it the Board of Deputies was born in the East End.

Many socialist Jews are brainwashed against Israel and have taken the side of the Muslims.

Because non-socialist Jews are not angry and loud their concerns are regarded as trivial. Because the Muslims take to the streets and burn effigies their concerns are taken as legitimate grievances.

[Sharona]

Having some personal insight into this, I tend to agree that Councils are inclined towards socialist agendas, but the dictates come down to them from on high and the policies lend themselves towards employing people who are suitably in line. The actual councillors - the elected-by-the-people - members are not socialist. At least, those who haven't signed up to socialism. They're just ordinary people who think one thing but are sidelined by Council officers, policies and politically correct language.

As far as Melanie Phillips is concerned - I haven't always been her biggest fan because, on occasion, she can confuse 'passion' with a sort of hysterical-type turn of phrase. That said, I do think she is quite popular amongst the grass roots Conservative-type of mindset. They feel utterly betrayed by Cameron who, in my view, is simply a career politician. Melanie speaks in the old-fashioned, common-sense style that they understand and whose loss they mourn.

You are absolutely right when you mentioned the perversity of the 'righteous' who appease those who are able to shout loudest, whilst over-looking those who are the victims and who have no voice.

We know full-well that there are young girls who are forced into arranged marriages and those who are taken out of school for months, sent to Pakistan for this purpose. We know about Muslim women who are unhappy and abused - we have laws to cover home-grown domestic violence, but tippy-toe around it when it comes to a religion.

But is the current situation true socialism anyway? If all are equal then the wave of anti-semitism should be seen in the same light as that of Islamophobia. The concerns of the ordinary man of the street with regard to the changes in the UK are as valid as those who applaud them.

The newest 'minority' to fall under Governmental concern are the travellers. There's lots of noise going on here, with all and any objections being treated as 'racist'. I have a question, though - are travellers an actual race? Aren't they just people who have opted to live in a certain way?

[kozzol]

.....are travellers an actual race? Aren't they just people who have opted to live in a certain way?

That depends on which ones you are asking about as there are different types, you have the Romany gypsies, who descended from India, then your have the Tinkers, who were agricultural labourers travelling from farm to farm in the 1700-1900's who remained that way, the pike-ies, who originate from Ireland again like the Tinkers.

The Romanies have their own language, culture.

[maven]

I have a question, though - are travellers an actual race? Aren't they just people who have opted to live in a certain way?I would answer your question very simply. Travellers are composed of Gypsies who left what is now India a long time ago, probably much as the Jews left Israel as a result of persecution, they share common linguistics though say Romanian Gypsies are culturally different from English Gypsies through the vaguaries of time, place and circumstance. Romanian Gysies spent a long time in Italy but must have been driven out, I'm not sure of their history.

They also contain 'Irish travellers (or 'tinkers' menders of pots) who have been on the road since the great Irish famine when they were burnt out of their cottages by the agents of absentee English landlords. They are also believed to include remnants of the pre-British Irish aristocracy and their tribal forces, also disspossesed. Some English travellers ditto; remnants of seasonal workers for hire.

There was a period in the 1980s when a phenomena called the 'New age travellers occured. These were mainly middle and workingclass kids who unlike the hippies dropped out of society not because they wanted to get back to nature but because they had been heavily brainwashed against the Thatcher vision of society; they were remnants of British 'looney-left' socialism.

As far as I know the last group no longer exist and many have found their way abroad to places like Ireland and Italy or just gone back into society.

So in conclusion i would presume that to accuse a traveller of not being a traveller is like accusing a Jew of not being a Jew because he or she is not racially Semitic or converted or came into the fold through intermarriage.

Respecting Travellers is vital in maintaining respect for Jews also.

[codedvirus]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/02/26/wilders.us/
Anti-Islam film’s director Geert Wilders goes to Washington

(CNN) — A right-wing Dutch politician arrived in the U.S. Thursday to show his controversial film attacking Islam.

Geert Wilders says he fears the Islamization of Europe but his short film on the subject has provoked death threats, Muslim protests and led the UK to refuse him entry.

In the U.S., Wilders is touring with the film “Fitna” and meeting with lawmakers in Washington.

The 16-minute documentary juxtaposes passages of the Quran with the mass murder of 9/11 and other acts by extremist Muslims.

He says if liberal lawmakers in Europe can ban Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” then they should also bar Islam’s holy book.

But his critics argue he is twisting selected passages from the Quran to suit his argument in the same way that extremists do to promote terrorism.

Wilders told CNN: “It would be ridiculous to say all Muslims are terrorists. This is nonsense. But most of the terrorists in the world today are Muslims…

“Islam is not just another religion. I believe Islam is more a totalitarian ideology. I have nothing against Muslims. The majority of Muslims in our societies are law-abiding people.”

In another CNN nterview he said: “I believe that we should be proud and stand up and say, well we don’t want our children and grandchildren living in a world, in a country dominated by Islamic culture that is only at the end of the day costing us all our freedoms. “…I have nothing against Muslims, but I am very much afraid of the Islamization of our continent.”

Radwan Masmoudi, from the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy: said “I know he doesn’t have a beard and he looks nice with his blond hair, but his views and his opinions are extremely mirror image, exactly mirror images of what al Qaeda has been trying to teach. He is the al Qaeda of the Netherlands.”

Wilders was invited to the U.S. by Republican Senator John Kyl to show “Fitna” to lawmakers in a Senate building near the Capitol.

Kyl said “all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered.”

When he answered a similar invitation from a British politician, the UK government called Wilders a threat to community harmony and therefore to public security, and refused him entry to the country.

[kozzol]

(CNN) — A right-wing Dutch politician arrived in the U.S. Thursday to show his controversial film attacking Islam.

I just dont see how the film is attacking Islam. If 'Geert Wilders' made a film based on falsehoods and made up verses, then yes.

It has been suggested that the film 'A Jihad for Love' directed by 'Parvaz Sharma' is attacking Islam.

'Parvaz Sharma' has received death threats etc. Why? Because he has questioned Islam?

My wife and I watched part of this film, then lost interest, but left it on until the end because we refuse to be dictated too by threats of religous zealots, in what we can watch or say about religion, whether it be Islam, Christian, Judaism etc.

I cant wait until someone is brave enough to bring out a film like the 'Life of Brian' based on Mohammed and Islam.

[Sharona]

I can't work out the 'he is the Al Qaeda of the Netherlands' comment.
:scratch:

I don't recall Wilders calling for us to wage a holy war, nor has he suggested suicide bombing or the implementation of a punitive legal system such as Sharia.

All we want is to continue to live in our respective countries in accordance with the culture we have - maintaining the status quo. That status quo cannot be a bad one; if it was it wouldn't have attracted immigrants in the first place. We don't want an alien religious system forced upon us nor our usual rights repressed by it.

Interestingly, a ME lecturer is visiting the School of African and Oriental Studies - the topic of course is 'Political Islam'. Surely that is indicates the political aspects of this religion?

[Kenneth]

It has been suggested that the film 'A Jihad for Love' directed by 'Parvaz Sharma' is attacking Islam.


I watched that. 2 nights ago on BBC4. I enjoyed it for the most part. But I got the distinct impression that the Gay Muslims were really really trying hard to present themselves as good Muslims in every other aspect of their faith. The constant reference and praise to Muhammad. Kind of pathetic really. Reminded me of Andrew O' Sullivan's struggle to be seen as a Catholic.

Although this might have been exaggerated in the vain hope that some of their foaming at the mouth brethren would rethink their own prejudice.

[Aviva]

Respecting Travellers is vital in maintaining respect for Jews also.

I don't think anyone would deny travellers their culture and history, if they were genuine Romany descendants or did have a connection with the aftermath of Irish potato famine. But, as I see it, the word "gypsy" refers to a wide range of travellers these days rather than the specific ethnic group it used to refer to.

The problems travellers are potentially are being accused of are social ones, that is, that they don't fairly pay their pay in society or have respect for property, etc.

I don't see a connection with them and Jews in modern Britain. As I understand it, gypsies were hated in Nazi Europe because the Romanies were seen as ethnically non-Aryan, like the Jews. Their lifestyle was not so much in question to Hitler as was their ethnicity.

[maven]

I don't think anyone would deny travellers their culture and history, if they were genuine Romany descendants or did have a connection with the aftermath of Irish potato famine. But, as I see it, the word "gypsy" refers to a wide range of travellers these days rather than the specific ethnic group it used to refer to.

The problems travellers are potentially are being accused of are social ones, that is, that they don't fairly pay their pay in society or have respect for property, etc.

I don't see a connection with them and Jews in modern Britain. As I understand it, gypsies were hated in Nazi Europe because the Romanies were seen as ethnically non-Aryan, like the Jews. Their lifestyle was not so much in question to Hitler as was their ethnicity.Thing is though that the Iranians are using the same argument in their propaganda against Jews in Israel; i.e. that most Jews are not Jews at all; they are white Europeans or Black Africans rather than being indiginous Middle East Semites.

Gypsies are only one of the traveller groups.

[Aviva]

Thing is though that the Iranians are using the same argument against Jews; i.e. that most Jews are not Jews at all; they are white Europeans or Black Africans etc.

Gypsies are only one of the traveller groups.

I would also argue that the Jews are not a race as such because only the mother needs to be ethnically Jewish to pass on that heritage and converts, although few in numbers, add to an eclectic mix of Jewish ethnicity anyway. It seems to me that only racists would attempt to pigeon-hole the Jews into a "race". So what if Jews have some Khazar blood via the conversion of the 8th century Khazar royal family. Who cares what the stupid Iranians have to say about that.

For that reason, I find objections to Jews on ethnic/racial reasons hard to comprehend. A Jew-hater could oggle pictures of blonde blue-eyed Scandinavian sounding Scarlet Johannsen without any clue about her 100% halachic Jewishness.

[maven]

I would also argue that the Jews are not a race as such because only the mother needs to be ethnically Jewish to pass on that heritage and converts, although few in numbers, add to an eclectic mix of Jewish ethnicity anyway. It seems to me that only racists would attempt to pigeon-hole the Jews into a "race". So what if Jews have some Khazar blood via the conversion of the 8th century Khazar royal family. Who cares what the stupid Iranians have to say about that.

For that reason, I find objections to Jews on ethnic/racial reasons hard to comprehend. A Jew-hater could oggle pictures of blonde blue-eyed Scandinavian sounding Scarlet Johannsen without any clue about her 100% halachic Jewishness.I'm just making the point that the Iranians are using the same argument against Jews that some are making against travellers. Also it is many Jews who make the argument that we are a race.

[Aviva]

I'm just making the point that the Iranians are using the same argument against Jews that some are making against travellers.

A Jew is still a Jew even if they don't practice the Jewish religion or have any contact with the Jewish community.

However, is a traveller still a traveller if they don't travel?


Also it is many Jews who make the argument that we are a race.

I would be curious to hear how they would argue that point when only mothers needs to Jewish and converts have always been part of the Jewish family, as well as returned remnants of lost tribes and communities who's ancestors had been forced to convert to Christianity, Islam or communism.

[maven]

A Jew is still a Jew even if they don't practice the Jewish religion or have any contact with the Jewish community.

However, is a traveller still a traveller if they don't travel?



I suppose just as much as a Jew is a Jew even if he/she is secular. Travellers have a culture as well and still keep their traditions in a house.

I dont hold any brief for travellers and there is no doubt that their relation to the settled community is fraught, we don't have to go into the litter and abondoned cars etc., but they are a small group and so far have not been targeted by the far right.

I only have a concern for travellers if any group did choose to target them as they are targeted in Romania or Italy. That's the only reason I agree with protecting them.

[kozzol]

I watched that. 2 nights ago on BBC4. I enjoyed it for the most part. But I got the distinct impression that the Gay Muslims were really really trying hard to present themselves as good Muslims in every other aspect of their faith. The constant reference and praise to Muhammad. Kind of pathetic really. Reminded me of Andrew O' Sullivan's struggle to be seen as a Catholic.

Although this might have been exaggerated in the vain hope that some of their foaming at the mouth brethren would rethink their own prejudice.

You have nailed it there and lets not forget the reason why. In certain Islamic countries they are murdered for what they practise.

Of course if you attempt to show this through footage of Sharia law being executed, just like 'Geert wilders' has done in his film 'Fitna', then of course you are a racist, hatred inciter or the equivlant to 'Al Qaeda' of whichever country you come from.