The great irony is that, unlike many of today’s champagne socialists and shisha-jihadists my entire life has been a prototype of their archetypal aggrieved Muslim. Unlike the Guardian’s private school, Oxbridge-educated journalist David Shariatmadari, I am a state school-educated Muslim and racial minority. I have been stabbed at by neo-Nazis, falsely arrested at gunpoint by Essex police, expelled from college, divorced, estranged from my child, and tortured in Egyptian prison, and mandatorily profiled. I’ve had my DNA forcibly taken at Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 Laws, which deprive terror suspects of the right to silence at UK ports of entry and exit, among much else. I’ve been blacklisted from other countries. I am every grievance regressive leftists traditionally harp on. Yet their first-world bourgeois brains seem to malfunction because I refuse to spew theocratic hate, or fit their little “angry Muslim” box. Yet they talk to me about privilege, and non-fat lattes?
– Maajid Nawaz in an absolutely storming article. Highly recommended.
The British left are not being hypocritical about Islamism.
They are just being clueless and naïve, just as they were and still are about communism and are on economics.
The Left is hypocritical by default, since the Left causes are all false causes, except one: Power.
These false causes only exist insofar as they help combat the Left unique enemy: Western Civilization.
What do folks think of local-only private currency, like that in Bristol?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/fashion/change-for-a-bowie-the-advent-of-artisanal-cash.html
He lost me there.
He lost me at Hallal.
Pete
It is not that they are clueless or naïve, quite the contrary, they wish to destroy, and all that they support is dedicated to that end. To understand the Left, one should appreciate that aspect of the Leftist mindset. They are evil, not fools. They make use of fools to do evil.
Mr Ed has it right, those who identify themselves as being on the left are in general terms destroyers. The left never has had any genuine interest in humanity, especially when it comes to giving as many folk as possible a better material and emotional life, all they are really after is power, the power to control everyone else as they see fit. They will support any cause and follow any path to achieve that goal. If this route means killing nine tenths of the world they will do it.
I could almost feel sorry for Maajid Nawasz if he didn’t actually sound like an “angry muslim’ in his own words. Box or no box.
Then you (and some others here as well) really did not ‘get’ this article at all. He is not an “angry muslim”, he is just angry and happens to be a muslim.
Terrific! Before long he will perhaps be angry enough to organize demonstrations against the savages acting in the name of Islam.
Did you actually read the article, Ann?
This bloke is an ACTIVIST working against “the savages acting in the name of Islam”. That is why he is being attacked by leftists for actually speaking out against their jihadist tools (who they see as useful for dismantling western civilisation).
Ed is correct.
Ed and Perry are both correct.
The left are just bitter losers with daddy issues and will sacrifice all their supposed principles to the bully who’ll smash up society on their behalf.
And Maajid Nawaz is a good bloke. He’s the only recognised voice saying from inside the UK muslim community that the phrase “it has nothing to do with Islam” is nonsensical, bullshit and unhelpful.
The satirical piece linked from Nawaz’s article is good, too.
Alisa:
Islam is religion like any other
He lost me there.
Actually, I think that in a way he is right.
No religion is like any other religion – though some may be more, and some less, similar to others. So while Islam is not like any other religion, the same could be said of any religion.
It’s a bit like saying that, say Maajid Nawaz is a person like any other. In once sense, it is false, because he is unique. But since all of us are, it is fair enough to say that he is a person like any other.
John: it is not like any other to me, he lost me. Etc.
Sorry he was tortured in an Egyptian prison. I am sure he had good reason to be there and unlucky to fall under the gaze of the authorities. Personally I would keep away from such places, but each to their own. Also, hate to ask it, but what is an Activist exactly? Or should that be, as per Perry’s style, an ACTIVIST
As you clearly did not read the article very carefully, let me help you:
So the reason he was tortured in an Egyptian prison was that he was one of the bad guys. Not just a member of HT but one of its leaders. You had but to read the article and you would not then have needed to wonder what his good reason was or why he fell under the gaze of the authorities.
And then Maajid Nawaz had a rather radical change of heart and …
…has been working against Islamist political organisations, tirelessly undermining the whole “it has nothing to do with Islam” trope. Naturally a lot of people want him dead now. The whole ‘working against’ is what makes him an activist. He actually does things and speaks from a position of unimpeachable insider knowledge. And because I get angry when people cannot be bothered to read the fucking article they are replying to, I shout ACTIVIST when people opine from the safety of their keyboards that he should ‘do something about…’. He is doing something.
Keep shouting, Perry. There’s no excuse for opining w/o RTFA.
I am sure he is one of the good guys, trying to do the right thing. My point was that unless he understands that Islam is absolutely not like any other religion, he is not going to make a real difference. And yes, I know about Islamic stance on apostasy and would certainly not want to be in his shoes.
Alisa is correct.
As are, by the way, the “radical” Islamists (both Sunni and Shia).
There have been many evil Christians – people who have taken Augustine’s justification of violence and persecution and taken it as far as their depraved mind could go.
Torture, burning alive, mass murder – and so on.
However, there is no reason to suppose that Jesus was like that – or that he would have approved of their actions.
From this the modern “liberal” (very unlike Gladstone or even Winston Churchill) makes the assumption that as later Christians betrayed Jesus with their depraved cruelty (against other Christians – and against Jews and so on) so all other religions have been betrayed by “radicals” or “extremists”.
A misuse of language as a “radical” or “extreme” Christian should want to follow the teachings of Jesus – not betray Jesus.
This is based on the assumption (the assumption of modern “liberals”) that the Founders of all the religions were much the same and taught the same things.
The trouble is that this is just not true.
Mohammed was not like Jesus – his life and teachings were quite different.
Organisations such as ISIS (among the Sunni) and the “Party of God” (and so on – among the Shia) do not betray Mohammed.
Mohammed might have some tactical criticisms (for example that one does not show one’s hand to the infidels so blatantly – that one, on the contrary, should pretend to be peaceful before launching surprise attacks) but Mohammed would have no moral criticisms of the “radicals” – whether Sunni of Shia.
Murdering someone for the “crime” of criticism of Mohammed?
Mohammed had no moral problem with that.
Murder someone with the use of treachery? Pretend to be a friend and then kill?
Far from having a moral problem with that – that was Mohammed favourite tactic.
Islam does not have an “Augustine problem” or a “Cyril of Alexandra” problem (I always think of Cyril as the “patron saint of torturers and serial murderers” – but that is not his official title).
Islam has a “Mohammed problem”.
The actual Founder of the religion.
And that is a problem of a totally different order than the problems that (for example) Christianity or Buddhism face.
Mohammed was just a different sort of person (a very different sort of person) from Jesus or Buddha.
The only hope for reform of the muslim world comes from one of Mohammed’s own sayings. I can’t find the passage, but he is supposed to have said something about how the Qoran had seven meanings in every verse, so, if you came across a weird saying, then you could assume that it had lots of hidden meanings, and you were supposed to work them out. The Sufis are people who spend their time looking into this, I read somewhere. (That’s the trouble with being widely-read; you forget the sources!)
As someone else said about the Bible, blessed shall be the translators, for they shall decide what is truth!
This means that muslims could develop their own reformation by looking at new interpretations of the Quran.
The Sufi seek a mystical union with God. They are not really interested in the specific words of the Koran or the hadiths – or even in the life (the battle tactics and so on) of Mohammed.
Mainstream Islam is not exactly fond of them.