And so it has proved — self-appointed Muslim leaders have reacted with the usual mixture of petulance and confected outrage. The letter, they insist, is ‘patronising’. One spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain asked: why no similar letter to Christian church leaders demanding they disassociate themselves from the English Defence League? It is difficult to imagine a more lame or ridiculous riposte.
The EDL is habitually reviled by British politicians and church leaders alike — and reviled for nothing more than its thuggish opinions and rare, sparsely attended marches. The EDL has not murdered anyone, nor sent its thick-as-mince legions to fight for the Islamic State, nor blown people up in London, nor tried to decapitate British soldiers on the streets of Woolwich. Reprehensible (and, frankly, laughable) though the EDL may be, there is simply no comparison. And to make the comparison suggests strongly to me that the Muslim Council of Britain does not remotely get the point. But then we should remember the former leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, Iqbal Sacranie, once suggested that mere death was ‘perhaps too easy’ for Salman Rushdie. A little after he said that, we knighted him. And for a long while the MCB refused to attend the British holocaust memorial service.
We have indulged parts of our Muslim community in epic paranoia, victimhood, clamorous obsessions and pre-medieval cultural appurtenances for way too long. And so perhaps it is too late to venture, tentatively, that we got our approach all wrong
Rod is absolutely spot on. HE’s one of a vanishingly small section of the journalism class actually interested in what the fuck is going on.
Other honourable mentions are Douglass Murray and Mark Steyn.
To be honest Johnny, I think Steyn reached his admittedly glorious apotheosis some time ago and has since gone out the other side into barking moonbat territory (right wing variant).
Quit yer’ ….Oh, I’ll GIVE you something to cry about!
Journalists like to say (and often believe) that they are controversial and they speak truth to power. In reality nine and a half tenths of them are deeply conformist, and spend their time being saying things that would, at best, have been mildly controversial or truth to powery, when their grandmas were in pigtails. Rod Liddle, in truth, is not really very controversial. He rarely goes out on a limb for something less than a completely butt naked Emperor. But so many PC Emperors parade about naked these days, that Rod can’t help noticing dozens of them. Kudos to him for being one of the few with the gumption to laugh at them. But it says something about the conformity of everybody else, that he is regarded as a controversialist these days.
re: Perry
http://www.steynonline.com/6739/id-rather-die-standing-than-live-on-my-knees
I think Mark is right on the money in this interview the day after Charlie Hebdo.
What has Mark said that you consider moonbattery?
This assessment of Ludwig II is applicable to the majority of politicians and journalists:
Ludwig II (right) may have been a hyper-sensitive romantic obsessed with constructing a fantasy world as a refuge from reality, but the psychiatric profession has not distinguished itself here. Diagnoses since 1866 include paranoia, ‘a mixture of madness, moral insanity and folly’, cerebral syphilis, schizophrenia, narcissism, ‘imperial madness’, neurodegenerative disorders and so on.
He really does think Birmingham is like District 9, only with Muslims instead of space aliens. So yeah, I am all for standing up to toxic Islam but I am not convinced Steyn-style hysteria is actually an accurate description of reality.
This video puts numbers to the “moderate” Muslim argument and backs up Rod Liddles contention that the majority of Muslims are NOT in any way, shape or form, moderate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g7TAAw3oQvg&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534
It is heartening to know that access to the internet in Muslim countries is leading to a phenomena never known there before, a rise in atheism, or at least a-religionism, which is starting to worry a lot of the religious establishment. These brave people deserve our support, if we can give them any.
https://ar-ar.facebook.com/Exmuslims.ma
Quite so.
Tangentially, we have some guidance on inter-faith matters from the Archbishop of Canterbury, no doubt he will be a guest preacher in Jeddah before Easter on ‘inter-faith matters’.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/554072/Archbishop-Justin-Welby-defends-UK-s-Saudi-King-half-mast-flag-decision
Also, the EDL don’t go around proclaiming themselves to be Christian crusaders, do they?
And that statement in itself says it all.
‘Tentatively’. Ha!
There are times when you don’t mince words. Just say your approach was utterly asinine, insane, and ultimately destructive towards your own communities, society, and country.
Say goodbye to Western civilization if you don’t wake up in time.
Surely it doesn’t matter at this stage what nonsense Muslim leaders feel the need to trot out. They are not stupid. They are consistent and working according to a well-developed plan of incremental attack (jihad) by violence and stealth. Of course they are going to deny all, take the victim role, and point fingers everywhere but at themselves. It’s Muslims that need to be protected from society’s bigots, etc.
Some people probably already reckon that things look pretty gloomy for Western civilization, whose leaders seem to have no plan of defense, and who have arguably so skilfully already lost the plot by giving in to and appeasing this creeping religio-political fascist ideology, that there will probably be a bloodbath – since history suggests that is all we seem to know to do in dire circumstances. It would probably have been avoidable by/at an earlier stage, but not now when things may have gone too far and too much ground has been unwittingly given away to the inch-is-now-a-mile brigade. But “down” is not yet necessarily “out” – “I get knocked down, but I get up again” could still apply here. This could be a new civil war for the UK and other European nations.
Refusing to “submit” is likely going to require some not inconsiderable backbone – submitting might seem a much safer route than resisting.
“We” did not knight Sacranie, that fathead Blair did.
How can a devout Muslim accept a knighthood, with all the Christian baggage that the honour carries? (Not that knighthoods are anything but a voluntaristic concept, that only exist in the human imagination).