“Only one in four British Muslims believe Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel, report reveals”, reports the Telegraph.
Only one in four British Muslims believe that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on Oct 7, a major report has found.
46 per cent of British Muslims said they sympathise with Hamas, according to a poll commissioned by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a counter-extremism think-tank.
Later in the article Fiyaz Mughal, who has done as much as anyone alive to work against Muslim extremism, is quoted as saying, “The Government has got to provide better guidance for teachers, schools and education establishments.” He is not wrong as far as it goes but I don’t think sending even a really super government guidance circular to education establishments is going to be much help now:
Younger and well-educated Muslims were the most likely to think Hamas did not commit atrocities on Oct 7, with the proportions rising to 47 per cent among 18 to 24-year-olds and 40 per cent among the university-educated.
*
An Excel table giving the full results of the polling carried out by J.L. Partners for the Henry Jackson Society can be downloaded from this link. Two polls were conducted, one of British Muslims over the period 14th February – 12th March 2024 and one of the British public in general over 4th – 6th March 2024.
with the proportions (of young “well educated” Muslims) rising to 47 per cent among 18 to 24-year-olds and 40 per cent among the university-educated.
Equally pertinently I suspect the proportion for non-Muslims in the same age group and category is too unpalatable to ever be mentioned.
The best guidance for teachers is to quit.
The idea that education will rid people of this hatred is naive.
The poll results are not surprising, nor are the tepid recommendations by the grifting experts quoted (‘better guidance for schools’). Wooo! That will terrify the Islamics!
Meanwhile, mass immigration into the country continues…..
No leader in the public sphere is willing to tell the truth about Islam: what it teaches, what its followers believe and how they behave and how the founder of the Religion of Peace behaved.
Everything we need to know is in the Koran and the Hadith, yet most people, and all our leaders, are afraid to face the truth.
I have posted here before and on other sites, although the idea is not mine originally, if the ideas of Islam were put forward by middle-aged white men it would be a proscribed organisation.
An Excel table giving the full results for the poll in question can be found here.
The quote from the Henry Jackson Soceity’s boss in the Telegraph article was grimly amusing:
“The Government needs to find a way of supporting and strengthening the voice of moderate Muslims and drive the extremist narrative to the sidelines.”
Imagine all the effort put into commissioning the poll, running a report on it,only to make such a milquetoast policy recommendation.
The old Aesop about the frog and the scorpion would be something to keep in mind, when thinking about this.
Your “betters”, the so-called “elites” have brought destruction upon your culture by bringing these people and their ideology in. Thanks to the camouflage enabled by “religious tolerance”, you’ve basically imported the equivalent of Nazism. A Nazism you don’t dare criticize, because “religion”. As they gain ascendancy in numbers, they’ll destroy your culture, your commons, and everything else that make Britain Britain.
The irony here is that the “elites” think they’re somehow going to survive the coming transition, and that they’ll still be running things when it is all over. They won’t be. Your new masters will be Muslim, and you will be Dhimmi.
Thank your leadership for this, at earliest opportunity.
There are no moderate muslims. Some are more religious than others, but the less religious ones go along in the wake of the more religious. See what life is like in majority muslim countries. They pretty quickly go from “majority” muslim to 99.9% muslim.
Scottish readers please forget they ever saw this.
It would probably be more accurate to say the claim not to believe the atrocities happened. Most of the people who claim this would probably also say “and besides they were completely justified”.
@Natalie thanks for linking to the raw data.
I spent some time in it, and it is quite horrendous. However, I’m not at all convinced I find the data of high quality. You’ll notice on the front page they tell you their sampling methodology. They used a different method for Muslims and the general population. Why the difference isn’t clear, but it certainly seems suspicious. For Muslims they used a methodology called “river sampling”. Essentially what that means is that they found people doing certain online activities and invited them to take the survey. So river sampling has an online bias based on what activity they were sampling from, and what that is isn’t made clear in the methodology.
So, and I’m not saying they did this, but just as an extreme example, if they sampled off a Jihadi discussion forum you’d expect a really biased sample with the sort of data they got, especially since the sample size is pretty small at 1000 and mostly insignificant in the cross tabs (surveying 100 people doesn’t tell you much.)
So I don’t know how trustworthy this data is without them explicitly saying how they sampled in more detail. Maybe that is pedantic, but one thing I have learned over the years is that “surveys” are very prone to bias and producing extremely misleading data. One of the problems with statistics and surveying it that they are EXTREMELY sensitive to these sorts of details, and a tiny tweak can turn results upside down. Maybe this data is right, I just hope it is methodologically skewed, because if it isn’t it is indeed terrifying.
As ever, Sir Humphrey explains this very well.
Sadly anyone drawing attention to this is likely to get PUNISHED – not by Muslims, but by the Western establishment. “If no one mentions the beliefs of the followers of Islam, these beliefs do not exist” is the attitude of the Western establishment. It is a bit like a certain interpretation of Quantum Mechanics – which holds that something is not in existence till “observed” (this is what Schrodinger mocked with his cat thought experiment – sadly most modern people do not seem to grasp that Schrodinger was mocking the absurdity of this).
As for what seems like contradictions – such as many people saying that Hamas fighters did not commit murder or mass rape, in spite of them obviously doing so, there is really no contradiction. Remember the murder of infidels is not murder, and forced sexual intercourse with infidel women who “one’s right hand has taken” is not rape. Murder and rape have legal definitions in Islam – which is a legal system not just “a religion” in the Western system.
As for followers of Islam who do not support Hamas – they sometimes support other groups such as Islamic Jihad. There is no obligation to support a particular group.
Lastly on people who call themselves Muslims but do NOT support spreading the power of Islam by any means necessary – Muhammed called such people “hypocrites” and stated that the punishment for being such a “hypocrite” is death.
Most likely I should have only written the truth under a false name – but I am too tired.
@JohnK
There are no moderate muslims.
This is factually false. I personally know several moderate muslims, and I have discussed their religious beliefs with them at length, they’d no more kill a Jewish person than I would. So there certainly aren’t “no” moderate muslims. You can argue what the percentage is if you like, but it isn’t 0.00%.
Fraser:
Your friends are probably very nice people who wish you no harm. But when islam is the majority religion, you will be a dhimmi come what may. That is when you will find life so much easier if you simply “revert” to islam. There is a reason why islamic countries tend to be 90%+ islamic.
Now the really interesting numbers about Muslim “assimilation” come out of France the last few decades. The numbers stay pretty constant generation to generation. No matter how long they live in a Western country.
About 1/3 support Islamic salafist terrorism. Or some form or other. And another 1/3 are either sympathetic or very sympathetic to salafist terrorism. They “understand” why Salafist murder both non Muslim and Muslim they consider “too western”. Less than 1/3 show little of no sympathy towards the salafisi but when push comes to shove maybe 10% max can be considered integrated. They rest have contempt for the west and western ideals.
You can have large (>10%) Muslim population or you can have a liberal democracy. You cannot have both.
In the UK the Muslim population as a demographic has by far the highest welfare dependency rate. By a very wide margin. And the more”religious’ the Muslim family the more likely they live in “poverty”. Because by definition low skill single income families in the UK are “poor”. Although these families are disproportionately from a Kashmiri Mirpuri and Bangladeshi Bengali peasant background.
But thats another story.
@JohnK
Your friends are probably very nice people who wish you no harm. But when islam is the majority religion, you will be a dhimmi come what may. That is when you will find life so much easier if you simply “revert” to islam. There is a reason why islamic countries tend to be 90%+ islamic.
I suggest you hop a plane and go to Dubai (or most of the other Emirates in the UAE.) The dystopia you assume is not at all like what life is like for non muslims there. In some respects non muslims have more rights that muslims not being subject to the Sharia courts. I have some friends both muslim and non muslim living there, and the picture you paint is not at all what this modern, sophisticated, growing muslim state is like at all. For example, a famous missionary, whose name I forget, says the the UAE is far more tolerant of Christian evangelism and missionary work than the UK. The fact is that compared the the USA, the UAE is a vastly more free in many ways. Of course it has its warts, but there is none of this intersectional politics, or climate change nonsense (unless they can exploit it commercially), or men in dresses going in the ladies’ locker room, or on and on about a thousand other issues. Plus, FWIW, it has effectively zero income tax and effectively zero crime.
This is factually irrelevant. Every one of the “moderate Muslims” I’ve known, or “lapsed” ones has had kids who became dissatisfied with their lives and then “reverted to type”, taking up extremist beliefs. If you had the wit and wisdom to examine the trajectories of most of the really nasty terrorists, what you’d find is that they’re very often guilt-ridden former apostates who came from privileged backgrounds.
The mind-virus that is Islam never seems to let go of its victims. You invite the “moderate” into your home at high risk; they may remain “moderate” for most of their lives, but their kids have a very high rate of recidivism to type.
I’ve lost track of the number of terrorist leaders who had everything going for them… Doctors, lawyers, engineers… Educated at the most prestigious Western institutions, and who suffered multiple crises of conscience and then went on to “prove themselves” as “good Muslims” by killing unbelievers.
Just because you know a couple of random “good moderate Muslims” does not mean that its a good idea to invite them in. Once they’re clasped tight to your bosom, the knives have habit of coming out and going into your back.
Fraser Orr.
Islam is what it is – as for people who call themselves Muslims but will not support what is necessary to spread the power of Islam (against Jews – or anyone else) Muhammed called them “hypocrites” and he stated that the penalty for such “hypocrites” (his word – not mine) is death.
Westerners used to be well aware of the basic doctrines of Islam (as the words of Gladstone, Winston Churchill, and many others, show), but modern Westerners have made themselves ignorant of the basic facts and PUNISH anyone who reminds them of what they used to know. Muslims are NOT to blame for the ignorance of Westerners – the Westerners have done this to themselves.
By the way Fraser Orr – this is not really about Jews, yes Muhammed hated Jews after they refused to follow him – but the situation would not be fundamentally different if the people in the way of Islam were Christians or atheists (indeed it might be worse for atheists).
It does not really make any difference if it is Tel Aviv or Huddersfield. It is a matter of being in the way of the expansion of Islam – it is nothing personal.
Yes some Muslims may feel hate (and hatred is not a weakness, well it may well be a MORAL weakness but it is not a PRACTICAL weakness – as people of all religions, and no religion, should know – hatred is a source of strength, it can keep a person going long after they should have collapsed, it can enable a person to achieve seemingly impossible things), but Muslims do NOT have to feel hatred – just as long as they get the job done.
This is the anti-civilization ideologizing by the British education system working.
Paul,
“If no one mentions the beliefs of the followers of Islam, these beliefs do not exist” .
If one does mention them you are condemned as a bigot and Islamaphobe. With a visit from His Majesty’s constabulary soon to follow.
Why on earth people want to move half way around the world and carry their old snits and quarrels along is a mystery to me.
Staghounds said:
This, right here, is why nice people like you should stay the hell out of foreign policy and immigration. You literally cannot conceive of the idea that other people don’t think the way you do.
The Muslims have this desire to spread their poison world-wide. It’s baked into the religion; everywhere that they have gone, they’ve brought eventual disaster to. Persia was once a high civilization; today? They’re inbred morons intent on destroying everything that is not Shia Muslim. See much like the poetry of Omar Khayam coming out of the former Persia, lately? Thank Islam.
It’s just like the idiocy of the US State Department, that could not conceive of the inter-ethnic issues in the Balkans. They don’t behave like that, so how could anyone else? Morons, one and all… Incapable of grasping that other cultures are actually “other”, alien to their experience.
Those people moved halfway around the world to bring their wars to your doorstep, make you a beggar in your own country, and rape your daughters. They won’t tell you that, but that’s the reality of what is going on. Eventually, it will be October 7th everywhere Islam reaches, and make no mistake about it.
Fraser:
I fully accept that Dubai, for example, is a nice place to be an educated Western dhimmi right now. But that is all you are, and all you will ever be. The rich foreign dhimmis, who are useful, may be treated well. The poor foreign dhimmis who do the grunt work, less so.
If the regime changes, then the treatment of dhimmis will change. Do not expect “moderate” muslims to come to your aid. Whatever happens will be the will of allah.
I actually feel sorry for Hamas. They commit an atrocity, document it with cameras, film and reports to send the message “Look how bad ass we are. Tremble before our ruthlessness, power and might” and everyone then says “it is Jewish propaganda. All AI and CGI and the blood etc. is Kensington gore”. I can imagine the leaders of Hamas in deep gloom saying in essence “What do we have to do to convince them we’re serious?”.
@Kirk at 11.03PM,
This video clip gives a brief introduction to Palestinian destabilising of other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7GAg8sWDpI
And for a different perspective on those aid workers killed in Gaza:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-aid-convoy-tragedy-in-gaza.html
But there again, repeat in chorus, “Israel is making up all the stories about Hamas using hospitals, schools and residential districts as shields”. It is another example of Taqiyya, exactly the same as the Russian term maskirovka and used in exactly the same way.In the western press, a dead child is worth 1000 rifles to Hamas in achieving its goals.
Every thing you need to know about Islam is visible in the Gulf Arab countries, right there in the open, on full display.
Go to Kuwait, for example. See all the different colored coveralls on all the nice TCN people doing all the actual work, like out landscaping around Kuwait city? Those are people they’ve brought in, confiscated their passports, defrauded on promised pay, and warehoused in vast crowded dormitories. Doesn’t even matter if they’re fellow Muslims; they treat the Pakistanis much as they treat the Sri Lankans.
It’s a weird vibe to get, realizing that you’re watching a real-life version of one of the Planet of the Apes movies, with actual human beings filling the roles of the apes. I think the movies showed rather more concern and care for the apes than the Kuwaiti elite showed for the TCNs, or Third-Country Nationals. I heard some real horror stories from the ones that the US Army got from the labor brokers, and who wound up working food service and other menial jobs out in the camps with us. If you talked to those guys, it was mind-numbing to realize that there were college-educated professionals who found it a better choice to do manual labor in the Middle East than stay at home and starve in a profession like lawyer.
Horror stories abounded about broken contracts, confiscated passports, lost leave, and on and on and on. They treated every non-Kuwaiti like that, and even the English contract nurse I ran into down at the Kuwaiti National Military Hospital (exact name may be off…) had some real cautionary tales to relay. Her work life and so forth were only marginally more secure than the average Sri Lankan laborer.
Operate under no illusions, when dealing with Islam. Hell, even if you’re another Muslim, if you’re not Arab or a blood relative, you’re barely qualified as excrement on their sandals.
Not always true of all Kuwaitis, but a clear majority operated like that, in my experience. Even though we were there to deal with Iraq and defend Kuwait from another conquest, we were still seen as sheep ripe for the fleecing. By everyone.
@JohnK
If the regime changes, then the treatment of dhimmis will change. Do not expect “moderate” muslims to come to your aid. Whatever happens will be the will of allah.
Isn’t that self evidently tautological? I mean it is like saying “If the United States turns into a tyranny, then we will be tyrannically oppressed.” Or, “if things change, they will definitely be different.” I mean, sure that is true, but it doesn’t offer any useful insight.
Of course I recognise that they bring their hates, it’s just crazy that they do. And crazy people are crazy, they don’t get there by logic and can’t be logicked out of it.
What does offer “useful insight”, however? An examination of the historical facts.
None of which bode well for anyone stupid enough to let Islam gain a toehold in their nations. You want peace? Rid yourself of the Islamic faith, and all of its adherents. Observe what is going on in Michigan, today: Crowds shouting “Death to America”.
I don’t know how stupid you have to be to observe that, and not take the lesson from it, but… That’s pretty damn stupid. Like, “too stupid to live”.
Y’all will learn. Don’t say you weren’t warned. The histories are all right there, as are the words and preaching of modern Islam. You’re a complete fool to trust a religion that mandates lying to outsiders in the furtherance of the faith, but you’ll brook no truths about that be told.
History will have an ugly verdict for your sort.
@Kirk
I don’t know how stupid you have to be to observe that, and not take the lesson from it, but… That’s pretty damn stupid. Like, “too stupid to live”.
I very occasionally scan what you say, and when I do I am reminded why I ignore you. This type of personal attack has no place in this forum. You are welcome to disagree with me. You are even welcome to use your normal argument style of ignoring what the other person says or attacking strawmen that the they did not say. But calling someone “too stupid to live” or to say I don’t have “the wit and wisdom” to follow some argument, if I might choose a couple of your gems from your surfeit of rudeness, is not at all acceptable in any productive discussion.
It is definitely possible that I am both “too stupid to live” and that I “lack the wit and wisdom” to follow your discourses, but it is rather more polite and productive to attack the argument rather than the man.
I hope this comment encourages you to reassess your rhetorical style, but I’m not holding my breath.
All the evidence we have shows that we like religious turmoil and war.
lucklucky – it need not be the British education system, it could be any education system. An uneducated person might say, if they are asked why they are a Muslim, “because my family are Muslim”, or “because my community is Muslim” – it is only if someone has knowledge of Islam (is educated – in this sense) that attacks on infidels make sense. Someone could just be a nominal Muslim (a Muslim because their family is Muslim or their community is Muslim) and be the sort of kindly person that Fraser Orr describes. It is only when they are ordered to attack that the choice comes – do they attack, or do they leave Islam (coming under the penalty of death for leaving Islam).
“Uncle Bill”, who lived with my grandparents in retirement, had served in what is now Iraq before World War II – he had many Muslim friends, but he told me that he had to be aware that any of his friends might try to kill him if asked to do so (he did not hold it against them – it is just how are things are and have always been).
“I sneeze in threes” – what you say was precisely my point, I hope it is obvious that I do NOT agree with the Western establishment that if one does not mention the basic beliefs of Islam they do not exist.
Kirk – remember the Shia may hate the Sunni (and vice versa), but they hate infidels far more – which is why the Islamic Republic of Iran regime is happy to support Hamas – a Sunni.
As for chanting “Death to America!” in Michigan and elsewhere.
Well they are being open and honest about their faith (surely this openness and honesty is to be welcomed) – sadly some people will still talk about “poverty and desperation” and how “they love their babies”.
You will find that many of the most effective enemies of America (and the infidel world generally) were born in America (and other Western countries) and are both well educated and intelligent. They do not have the conflict of loyalties that one sometimes finds in more supposedly “primitive” parts of the world – where Islamic doctrines may come into conflict with older tribal or clan traditions, such as the law of hospitality towards guests (even if they have a different faith) or the warrior code that fighting unarmed foes violates honour.
Muhammed seems to have had some difficulty in replacing such old beliefs – people had to be trained to do such things as fight against their own kin (if their kin opposed Islam), or to attack communities without warning – such as the Jewish communities in the Medina area. There was some mental resistance to the new ethical system.
So I would say Fred Z is mistaken – people do not naturally like attacking others (whether members of their own families – or near by communities with a different faith) for religious reasons, they have to be educated (in the broad sense of that word) to understand the reasons for such attacks.
Of course, I should have written – the “murder” of infidels is not murder IF the killings took place during an authorised attack – I apologise for my clumsy wording in an above comment.
Fraser:
The point I am making is that a muslim state like Dubai has decided to accept the presence of dhimmis because it suits it for now. If a future regime changes its mind about dhimmis, out they will go. Do not expect “moderate” muslims to stick up for you. They won’t. And if and when they become a majority in the UK, the game’s up. There won’t be any “moderate” muslims then.
JohnK.
It is sadly clear from his comments on another thread that Fraser Orr does not take Islam seriously (has no basic respect for it as a system of thought) and does not take any other belief system (NOT just Islam) seriously either.
When dealing with someone like that, someone who dismisses all the basic belief systems of the world out of economic determinism – it all being a matter of “poverty and despair”, trying to reason with them is, sadly (tragically), not likely to be successful.
The Western establishment is like this – they refuse to seriously consider what Islam is (they refuse to show its followers the basic respect of taking their beliefs seriously) – and talk about “integration” with disrespectful and patronising assumptions, assuming that if Muslims are born in the West and are wealthy and educated they will “of course” not believe XYZ.
I respect Islam, I respect Muslims – I do NOT respect the Western establishment. The incredible arrogance and suicidal ignorance of the Western establishment (who seem to assume that both history and thought started in about 1963, with nothing of importance before then) makes them not fit to be respected.
“Younger and well-educated Muslims were the most likely to think Hamas did not commit atrocities on Oct 7, with the proportions rising to 47 per cent among 18 to 24-year-olds and 40 per cent among the university-educated.”
Over three decades ago, I was looking at an analysis of anti-semitic attitudes in the US. The good news was that most anti-semitism was mild, waning, and fairly rare. By mild, they included attitudes like “Jews are always good with money.”
For most groups, anti-semitic beliefs (and frequency) decreased with education. However for Blacks the opposite was true, and they were more likely to hold the more virulent beliefs – e.g., “The Jews were behind the Atlantic slave trade”.
Fraser’s outlook here reminds me of the girl who can’t understand why her charming, attentive, and well turned out boyfriend suddenly turns controlling and abusive when she lets him move in with her.
Paul:
As you say, it is only fair to accept that muslims believe the tenets of their religion. If they do not, they are not muslims. The “moderate” muslims are the ones who do not want to kill us or enslave us. But if the less “moderate” muslims achieve this, then they will go along with it. It’s their gang, and we are not in it.
@Fraser Orr…
Don’t count on it. I’ve never suffered fools gladly, and in your particularly foolish case, I don’t seem to be penetrating the density of your fantasy illusions. I will, however, keep trying, if only to attempt to offset the persuasiveness of your madness.
Ideas like yours don’t get enough pushback in real life, because people are “too polite” to tell you when you are full of shiite. Which, from your multitudinous platitudes on here, is pretty damn full.
Rocco said:
The thing you have to pay attention to is the sad fact that blacks are like unto the Gazan Arabs: They can’t stop themselves from shooting themselves in the foot.
Their number-one allies in both abolition, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movements were Jews. Well, Quakers, too, but… For some reason those sorts don’t come in for all the hatred.
And, yet… Who gets most of the oppobrium? The Jew. Why? Well, the Jews put their money where their mouths were, and opened a lot of businesses in the various ghettos of the US. They had the money, and the work ethic to make a success of those enterprises, but that did not extend to offering freebies up to the blacks. This earned them hatred, just like the big corporations are today hated when they recognize that the bottom line damage they’re undergoing from black criminality is bankrupting their stores in black neighborhoods, so they shut them down. Then, instead of looking at their neighbors who’ve robbed and shoplifted those stores out of existence, the blacks blame the storeowners.
To be black in America is to be unable to perform the slightest self-examination and simultaneously be unable to acknowledge that the reason people don’t want to be around them is their own behavior. I have friends of the family who were from Eastern Europe, came to America during the 1950s. When they came, they had not the slightest hint of racism; moving into a Detroit neighborhood where the blacks were taking over? Oh, they developed some… The stories about their kids getting beaten up for being white and showing off as “smart” in school were legion. One of their daughters was nearly raped by a crew of black pre-teens, had her clothes mostly off before her older brothers found them and nearly killed several of the blacks. Family moved not long after, and the legacy of those years goes marching on through the decades. Non-racists converted handily into full-bore “racist bastards”, whose encounters with blacks today are still informed by their experiences in the 1960s.
Own goals. That’s what they and their Arab brethren are really good at. That Czech family I’m thinking of had not one trace of racism going when they arrived. A decade-plus of exposure to actual ghetto black culture? Racists, the lot of them. Wonder why?
Worst “racist” incident I participated on active duty in the Army? Nigerians triggered it, by telling the rest of the American blacks that there were reasons that their ancestors sold them off to the white man, and that was mostly due to them being very poor slaves… Swear to God, that one had me observing the whole thing in a state of shock that a black person would say things like that in front of a group of other blacks, but that’s what happened. It was eye-opening to have him vent, as an actual African, what he thought of the blacks he’d encountered in America. I still think the shock of the whole thing was what kept the situation from going out of control, because if I’d gotten up and said what he said…? Yeesh. We’d have had a race riot on our hands.
Black America is not rational. It does not, as a group, ever bother to think or even examine much. I had a guy from an “historical black college” try and tell me that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat, that the Republicans were the ones who started the Civil War, that Martin Luther King was a Democrat, and that it was Republicans who filibustered and fought the Civil Rights Act in Congress. He also believed that the KKK was founded by Republicans, and that Republicans were the ones who put most of the Jim Crow laws into effect. Had a bit of an argument with him, over it; he claimed to have a degree in history, with a minor in African-American “studies”. Challenged him to go research the facts, and get back to me… Saw him again about a week later, after he’d spent a bunch of time off-duty in the internet cafe, furiously making notes and looking at various sources. At some point, we ran into each other again, and I was like “Well?”, and he had to offer a rueful apology: None of the above issues were things that any of his elders or instructors in school had talked about, at all. The role of the Democrats in the issues of slavery and the run-up to the Civil War had just always been glossed over, and all the rest were things that nobody around him had ever talked about. He described calling home to talk to his lone surviving Civil Rights era relation, a great-aunt, and she was like “Well, yes, I’ve always been Republican, and so was Martin Luther…” Flat blew his mind.
College-educated. Degree in history, from an historically black college. Factor that in with your considerations for why “the blacks” hate “the Jews”. They really don’t know any better.
That Nigerian guy that almost triggered a race riot? He had due cause, let me tell you what. I got to talking to him, later, and he described his father having come over to the US with a family/clan nest egg, to make something of himself. He’d opened a store in a majority-black neighborhood in California, got robbed and shoplifted into bankruptcy. Opened another one, after working his ass off and earning more capital. Same thing happened. Did it a third time, wound up shot to death and bleeding out in the street, while people from the neighborhood who he’d given credit to walked around him and stripped his little store bare of goods.
The son absolutely loathed American blacks. Can’t understand why… In the end, it’s not race, it’s culture. And, the culture is positively poisonous. Much like the Gazan Arab culture…
Over the weekend I went to a party for a friend, and got seated next to a woman whom I hadn’t met for some time and she wanted to catch up on what I did. I referred to my work in current affairs. She asked me about the Gaza situation, stating straight off the bat that what the IDF is doing is inflicting genocide. (I groaned inwardly. “Oh here we go,” I thought.) When, judging from my facial expression, she realised that I disputed this characterisation, she just would not stop insisting that there is genocide going on in Gaza. “I am surprised you cannot see that,” she said, if I recall correctly.
I argued that for genocide to apply, one would need to point out a deliberate campaign to wipe a nationality/ethnic group out (example: European Jews between 1939-45, the Armenian Christians (1918-20), etc. I noted the casualty figures among civilians, and how they stack up against, for example, the loss of civilian life in, say, the war in the West during WW2, such as when the Allies invaded Normandy to kick out the Nazis. My dinner table companion completely dismissed this with a “but that was about the Nazis”, and “Israel must stop what it is doing”.
When I pressed by asking “what would you have done instead?”, I got a sort of “well, there needs to be a ceasefire”; and I pointed out that ceasefires are rather hard to do with folk who have tried to slaughter you, take hostages and no doubt hope to retain their power. Then I got the “but the UK negotiated with the IRA” (a very interesting point for such a person to raise). I responded that, well, the IRA was close to being completely broken by the early 1990s as the UK security services had much of the IRA on the run. My companion changed the subject.
She then said, “well, what do you think that the Israel government knew the Oct 7 attack was coming but let it happen to justify a later war?”. At this point I noted that apart from how conspiracy theories usually had less credibility than cock-up theories, the proportionate loss of life for Israel has been high; much of the world has gone even more crazily anti-semitic, and started to protest about Israel even before the IDF reacted. Given this, is bizarre to suggest that the Israeli government let it happen. It also plays, I said, to the trope of a cunning and devious Jewish mindset. I did not get really much response to that.
After all this I got a sense that while my companion disagreed with some of my responses, she respected me, and certainly did not get nasty. I sometimes wonder if a lot of people, such as this lady aren’t used to people politely and sharply explaining their views. It is so important to keep making these arguments, not because they will immediately change minds, but because people need to know these arguments exist. One needs to sow “intellectual seeds”, get under the skin of people, as it were. Defenders of abominable views, or even those whom I regard as sentimental and ill-informed but not wicked, need to come up against those who can take a stand, and be civil about it.
My dinner companion asked me for a dance later.
@Johnathan Pearce
My dinner companion asked me for a dance later.
Alternative explanation — she fancied you and was willing to put up with your apostasy and heresy because of your charm and dashing good looks? Were it me, that’s how I would have explained it.
Fraser: 😎
We need to be careful with “sympathise”. It does not necessarily mean support.
I have very little time for Netanyahu or his government. I loathe the settler policy in the West Bank and the way they have divided up the few bits that they let the Palestinians live in. Yet, if polled, I would say that I sympathise with Israel.
I also have sympathy for the Palestinians who don’t vote for Hamas or their ilk.
There’s a lot of wiggle room in “sympathize”, but much less in the sentence above.
Alternative headline ‘54% of British Muslims are smart enough to lie to pollsters’
JohnK – yes to assume that people believe the basic doctrines that their religion (or non religious world view) teaches, is to treat people with respect – the respect of taking their beliefs seriously. The modern Western establishment view that Muslims “must” believe the same things as non Muslims – or will do if they have money and education, is incredibly patronising and disrespectful towards Muslims. It is also a sucicidal stance – the establishment are sticking their heads in the sand, and PUNISHING anyone who tries to warn them (“shooting the messenger” for “Islamophobia”).
Johnathan Pearce and Kirk – you showed a lot more patience than I would have done in your conversations. You both did a good job – excellent!
lucklucky:
Contrary to Paul Marks, i tend to agree that it is mostly the Anglo-American education system that is to blame.
Even “continental” (European) anti-Zionism is, in my opinion, mostly to be blamed on Anglo-American anti-Zionist propaganda, regurgitated by the “continental” media.
That is not to deny agency to the “continental” media: all what i am saying is that they are too brain-damaged to detect the inconsistencies in the Anglo-American media.
JohnK:
I was going to express pretty much the same view. Perhaps with more emphasis on the last sentence.
Paul:
This is definitely something that makes sense.
I don’t know for a fact that it is true, but it does make sense.
Johnathan:
Big mistake.
HUGE Mistake!
You should have argued instead that, since she eats British food, she is utterly unable to come to terms with reality.
@JuliaM
Alternative headline ‘54% of British Muslims are smart enough to lie to pollsters’
As I said above there is a good reason to question the quality of the data in this survey. I’m skeptical that it represents a particularly accurate picture for reasons I explained above. Believe these surveys at your peril. I assure you one might come out tomorrow saying “54% of cis gendered white males think Black people should go back to Africa”, or “54% of Trump voters think trans people should be arrested”. I’m sure with a little effort both survey results could be produced even though both statistics are utter nonsense. Surveys are often very poor quality data and if you want to be skeptical of those you disagree with, honesty dictates that you be skeptical about those you agree with, in fact the standard approach would be to be MORE skeptical of those that align with your preconceived ideas to avoid confirmation bias.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t a problem with the Muslim community in the west particularly among disaffected young males; there plainly is.