Doncaster English Democrat Mayor in Ignorant Taliban Outburst

When Peter Davies stood as mayoral candidate for the English Democrats in Doncaster earlier this year, he presumably did so with the professed intent of promoting traditional English values and democracy. It is therefore astonishing to read that he has this week made favourable remarks concerning the Taliban, a movement of extremist thugs who in their treatment of women make your average Stalinist or Nazi appear to be exemplars of beneficent humanitarianism.

Yes, some elements of society in Doncaster suffer from woeful problems exacerbated by familial breakdown, but to drag in the example of the Taliban to make some kind of specious assertion about Islamic family values is way off the mark. He is quoted by the Telegraph as stating "The one thing to be said about the Taliban is that they do have an ordered society of some sort and that they don't have hundreds of cases of children under threat of abuse from violent parents, as we have in Doncaster." [1]

Well, if one adopts Mr Davies’s topsy-turvy logic, there is some sense to what he says. However, looking at it objectively, he omits to mention the fact that the lives of all women are seriously constrained and blighted by living under the Taliban. I do not see anything to admire in the barbarous manner in which they are treated as mere chattles; second-class citizens who may be beaten at will by their menfolk and denied the basic rights of free association, gaining an education, a job, and dressing as they please. The Taliban advocate throwing acid into the faces of women who do not cover them in public, and demand the murder (formally classed as execution) of women who have sexual relations outside of marriage, just as prescribed by the sharia law code which Rowan Williams is happy to see creep into the United Kingdom.

Not only women are repressed under Taliban rule of course: atheists, homosexuals and apostates can be killed with a sense of righteous moral fervour, and the creative impulse is snuffed out in the arts and sciences alike. Granted, you might not happen upon quite so many single-parent problem households under the Taliban, but then again, the whole of society is under the heel of murderous psychotic barbarism. Whereas in Doncaster the violence may be restricted to psychotic families, the whole of society is rendered violent and psychotic under the Taliban.

Our armed forces have been waging a thankless struggle for years in Afghanistan, with many a life and limb lost, and many many more individuals traumatised by the stress of operations. It is an unwinnable war which has ostensibly been waged, at least in part, to secure decent treatment for Afghan women (despite the Karzai regime’s incorporation of repressive elements of sharia into the current penal code). Is this something that Mr Davies has forgotten? What his comments do show is that if other members of his political party share his views, they should neither be considered English nor democratic. With views like this it can be said with certainty that they cannot be considered to be a nationalist party in any meaningful sense of the term. The English love and respect their women Mr Davies, and do not (with a few criminal exceptions) view them as slaves to be beaten and abused.

References: [1] cited in ‘Britain “could learn from Taliban values’, says Doncaster Mayor’, Stephen Adams, Daily Telegraph 4 September 2009 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6132928/Britain-could-learn-from-Taliban-family-values-says-Doncasters-mayor.html

See also ‘New mayor tells town: “We could all learn something about family values from the Taliban”’, Luke Salkeld, The Daily Mail, 5 September 2009 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211233/Outspoken-mayor-claiming-learn-family-values-Taliban.html