70% of French prison population is Muslim

So Newsnight stated this evening. A remarkable figure, certainly, but a surprising one? Islam and France are not compatible, insofar as a vanishingly small percentage of Muslims entertain the concept of secularism. No Muslim who rejects secularism is anything other than an existential threat to France, and to the French way of life.

James Herriot turns in his grave

It’s a far cry from the cosy world of James Herriot with whom Thirsk has been associated for decades, for this is no tale of vets trying to alleviate animal suffering, but of sadistic practices in a North Yorkshire halal abattoir. Not only are animals slaughtered legally on the premises of Bowood Lamb, employing halal methods which inflict unnecessary and avoidable suffering, but a number of Muslim slaughtermen working at the facility have routinely added an additional layer of gratuitous cruelty to the process. This was uncovered by an investigation undertaken by Animal Aid carried out over three days last December which revealed:

•  Sheep kicked in the face; smashed into solid objects headfirst; picked up and hurled by legs, fleeces, throats and ears.
•  A worker standing on the neck of a conscious sheep, then bouncing up and down.
• Slaughterhouse workers erupting into laughter at a sheep bleeding to death with spectacles drawn around her eyes in green paint.
•  A worker holding a sheep by her throat and pulling back a fist as if to punch her.
• Slaughtermen taunting and frightening the sheep by waving knives, smacking them on the head and shouting at them.
• Slaughtermen hacking away at the throats of still-conscious sheep.
• There can be no justification for such maltreatment of animals, just as there can be no rational justification for either halal or kosher slaughter without pre-stunning.

It probably came as a surprise to you, as it did to me, that the North Yorkshire town of Thirsk was home to a halal abattoir. That such a business can be operating in an English market town goes some way to explaining how it is that such a large percentage of lamb in this country – some 37% last year – is slaughtered in accordance with halal practices, given that it far exceeds the percentage of the population of this country that is Muslim. It raises the question as to how many of us are unknowingly and unwittingly eating halal-slaughtered meat, when if we knew that this were the case, would be sure not to purchase the said product.

If you wish to see an end to the practice of religious slaughter without pre-stunning, then I would urge you to sign the ‘End non-stun slaughter to promote animal welfare’petition that as of this evening had garnered over 107,000 signatures. Furthermore, an additional petition has been created entitled ‘Make CCTV mandatory for all slaughterhouses’, calling upon Parliament to legislate with a view to stopping abuses such as those filmed by Animal Aid at Bowood Lamb in Thirsk. When I viewed it this evening, it had gained over 88,000 signatures. If it receives over 100,000, it will have to be debated in Parliament. 

Halal Slaughter: Cutting England’s Throat

This morning, John Humphrys announced on Radio 4’s Today Programme that the number of sheep and goats killed using either halal or kosher methods without pre-stunning, reached the staggering figure of 2.4 million in the past year. This represented a 60% jump in the number killed in this manner compared to the previous year. Why has there been such a surge? Muslim agitation. Not ‘extremist’ Islamist agitation, but mainstream Muslim agitation.  

The Daily Mail revealed that this number, according to the British Veterinary Association, represented 37% of sheep and goats killed using halal methods. Furthermore, nationally the percentage of cattle and poultry killed in this manner has now reached 25% and 16% of their respective totals.  

Let this be crystal clear: a special exemption to animal welfare legislation is granted to halal and kosher slaughterhouses to enable them to kill animals using less humane methods than are available. This is totally unacceptable. How can an alleged 5% of the population that is Muslim, have such a massive impact upon the slaughter practices of our national food industry? How can this minority roll back the tide of progress, and the majority capitulate in such a spineless manner? Are some afraid that if the right to halal slaughter is not granted, that it will be their throats that will be cut, instead of those of the terrified, fully conscious animals that are currently despatched in this manner? How backward, how irrational, how resolutely anti-British, anti-English, anti-European and anti-modern it is, to subscribe to the belief that a muttered Arabic incantation somehow renders this mode of slaughter ‘humane’.  

 If you must eat in an ‘Indian’ restaurant, do not order meat. If you eat at Pizza Express, and profess to care about animal welfare, be aware that all of its chicken is halal. Last year, circa one fifth of Nando’s restaurants were halal, as were 100 KFC outlets. Fancy something from Subway? Unless it’s a pork product, think again, as it could well be halal. If slaughter without pre-stunning is not stopped – completely – those who hold backward beliefs will have triumphed over the values of a more advanced, more humane and enlightened society. Is this progress? No. This is regression. Regression in the name of ‘diversity’, facilitated by the national body politic’s auto-immune disease known as multiculturalism.  

Boycott businesses that sell meat that has been slaughtered without pre-stunning. Sign petitions calling for the end of religious exemptions to animal welfare legislation. Write to your MP, and make your feelings on this issue known. Halal is the thin end of the wedge, as are Shariah-compliant financial products and sundry other areas of law. England, in particular, is being colonised by Muslim settlers and their descendants, and as such is dying; its progressive values slowly bleeding to death beneath the halal butcher’s knife.

George Galloway curries favour with Muslim Electorate through invoking the prophet Motive

It is perhaps somewhat paradoxical that the parliamentary constituency of Bradford West is very much of the East in terms of both its outlook and demographic complexion. Its MP – George Galloway, of the peculiarly named ‘Respect’ Party – knows his electorate well, and is no shrinking violet when it comes to setting out his political stall, the wares of which habitually pertain to something going on far, far away from these shores, almost always in a land with a majority Muslim population. This is, of course, no coincidence, for the lands to which he refers possess a greater emotional resonance for the bulk of his electorate than other parts of the Bradford Metropolitan District, such as Ilkley. You won’t often hear a resident of Manningham singing ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at’, for the preferred ‘song’ that wafts through the air in the vicinity of the minaret-like mighty chimney of Manningham Mills is the somewhat less lyrical, and rather more solemnly intoned, “Allahu-akbar”! Such a welcoming sound! Then again, perhaps, not.

Galloway is a canny operator, and unlike many of his opponents, is a competent orator who fine-tunes what he says for his audience to provide an appearance of ‘authenticity’. His stance is emotive, and his speeches invested with a degree of physicality, both contrasting with the listless and dull styles of the likes of Miliband, Cameron and Clegg (Miliband’s speeches possess all of the gravitas displayed by a twelve-year old presenting to the class on what he did over the summer holidays). So much for the style, but what about the substance? Alas, little positive can be said regarding the content of Galloway’s speeches upon which his talents are wasted. The latest of these he delivered on the steps of Bradford City Hall on the evening of Sunday 18 January, to a crowd several hundred strong, which had gathered to condemn the principles of freedom speech and expression, or more specifically, Charlie Hebdo.

Gathered in the dark chill of a winter’s night, his fiery oratory revisited familiar territory to fan the glowing embers of his audience’s resentment: ‘double standards’ in which ‘free speech’ was only ‘free’ if you were not a Muslim. He used the case of the recent murders perpetrated by Islamists in Paris as an opportunity to talk of a supposed anti-Muslim ‘backlash’ in this country and elsewhere in Europe, repeatedly invoking the cliché of the Muslim as ‘powerless victim’, forever set upon by an innately ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’ (sic.) society. His audience found his rhetoric emotionally sustaining; its tenor may have been predictable, but this is what his listeners yearned for. Of the images published by Charlie Hebdo he intoned:

“These are not cartoons. These are not depictions of the prophet. These are pornographic, obscene insults to the prophet, and by extension 1.7 billion human beings on this Earth.”

If Galloway deems the image below to be ‘pornographic’, all that can be said is that he must possess some pretty ‘specialist’ tastes when it comes to arousal. Admittedly, he did make a fair point when posing the question as to why the Saudis should have had a prominent representative at the front of the Paris ‘Je suis Charlie’ march, for quite obviously there is no free speech in Saudi Arabia, and certainly no leeway for anyone to produce depictions, let alone cartoons of, Muhammed.

Offering a cursory condemnation of the murder of 17 people in Paris, Galloway quickly moved on to the main theme of his speech:

“Charlie Hebdo’s entire purpose, and for years, has been to further marginalise, further alienate, and further endanger exactly those parts of the community who are already alienated, already endangered. It is a racist, Islamophobic, hypocritical rag. Je ne suis pas Charlie Hebdo! We say that the honour of religious people, their prophets, their beliefs, is not fair game for such people because there are already limits to freedom of speech.”

The crowd, predominantly Muslim, warmed to his words. George Galloway, the MP for a post-English Muslim enclave in the heart of urban Yorkshire, was forwarding himself as the defender of the Islamic faith; the champion of a new de facto blasphemy law in defence of dark age obscurantism. In his peroration, he stated: 

“So, for the sake of social peace, for the sake of unity in our society we have to demand from our Government the protection of the prophet from obscene and pornographic provocation, and in Parliament I intend to fight for that. Asalaam alaykum!”

To this, he might have added “and remember to vote for me at the forthcoming General Election, as I even went so far as to convert to Islam to win this constituency.” Perhaps it is being a little unfair to impute his conversion to tactical political cynicism, but then again, why would anyone with an ounce of intelligence who was not compelled to adopt this religion choose to embrace such a ragbag of incoherent religious twaddle? Furthermore, what sort of prophet and what sort of deity require the protection of the law? If this ‘Allah’ of theirs gets so offended by a few rather crudely drawn cartoons, he’s neither very balanced, nor omnipotent. Why should this be? Clearly because Allah only exists inside the heads of believers, for he is a work of fiction, and bad fiction at that. There really isn’t anything ‘akbar’ about him at all, and to have people demand respect for this nonsense is the greatest obscenity of all, particularly when considering that his beloved ‘prophet’ appears to have possessed anger issues on a level with those of Genghis Khan. This demand for ‘respect’ from Respect’s only MP, is offensive. 

How large is the Islamist Fifth Column?

Nigel Farage may have been chastised for employing the term ‘fifth column’ in a recent Channel 4 News interview when referring to what he termed a ‘tiny minority’ of Muslims in the UK, but his usage of this term was correct: there is a fanatical and violent Islamist fifth column in this country. Moreover, it self-evidently exists in many other European countries, wherever in fact, there are significant Muslim populations, i.e. in every western European state (although for the sake of exactitude I ought to make clear for pedantry’s sake that we should probably exclude Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino from consideration. As for the Vatican, well . . .).  

Before proceeding further, this piece rests upon the premise that Islamists actively identify against their European host societies, as the latter are not, and do not wish to become, Islamic states under the rule of Shariah. Islamists wish to establish the rule of Shariah and can be divided into two types: violent and non-violent. The former are willing to employ terror and revolutionary methods, whereas the latter may be content to use democratic mechanisms, relying upon gradual demographic change to gradually take control of the jurisdictions in which they reside. Both are a threat, with the first group demanding the immediate attention of our security services so as to contain and neutralise any imminent and nascent plots, whereas the second group can be dealt with via a combination of long-term surveillance, the choking off of financial support, and political measures that remove the ideological ‘respect’ accorded to Islam as a religion in this country and the other states of Europe.  

Not all Muslims are Islamists of course, but all Islamists believe in Islam. Hence, the higher the resident Muslim population, the greater the potential internal threat. So, how large is the Muslim population? What is the trajectory that it is set upon? 

The 2011 census recorded a total Muslim population of 2,706,066 in England and Wales, although this of course would not have included either those people who live here illegally, or those whose command of English is so limited as to have rendered them incapable of completing the census return. It is probably safe to assume that the actual number is above 3 million.  

The official statistics show that the Muslim population experienced phenomenal growth between the censuses of 2001 and 2011, for in the first of these years only 1.5 million people in England and Wales self-reported as Muslim. When we turn to the demographic composition of the resident Muslim population compared to people identifying themselves as Christian or as possessing no religion, the differences are pronounced, and suggest that the problems with Islamism that we encounter today are likely to grow and intensify in the future. Even if all immigration from Muslim countries were to cease now, the resident Muslim population would continue its rapid growth both in terms of absolute numbers and as a proportion of the overall population.  

Whereas 26% of Christians and 39% of non-believers were aged between 0 and 24 in 2011, 48% of Muslims fell into this age bracket. In the next age bracket of 25-49, the corresponding figures were a little more evenly balanced at 31%, 42% and 40% respectively, but turning to the retired segment of the population aged 65 and above, the respective figures are radically different, being 22%, 6% and 4%. In age terms alone, the potential for Muslim fertility is thus considerably greater than for either of the other two groups. Moreover, Muslims traditionally have larger families than members of the other groups. It is also worth considering that 53% of Muslims in the 2011 census had been born abroad, although that said, many second and third generation Muslims resident in the UK have turned to Jihadism. Islam therefore remains a physically, as well as a culturally, alien presence in England and Wales, and the sense of ‘grievance’ that is so frequently voiced by its adherents, from whichever of its many different varieties, is intrinsically linked to the desire for power, both cultural and political, in a country in which their culture and values, which they believe to be innately ‘superior’, have to take a subordinate position – for now – to those of the host society.

How might a ‘fifth column’ be defined? What should we consider to be its composite elements, and which pose the greatest danger? At the heart of this fifth column lie violent Islamists. Their numbers are difficult to estimate, but as a starting point, one can take the number who have been involved in the conflict in Iraq and Syria on behalf of ISIS or other Islamist organisations such as Al-Nusra. Intelligence estimates place this at somewhere in the region of 600. A certain proportion of these are unlikely to return from the Middle East, but it is reckoned that several hundred have come back to the UK. These individuals, together with other violent Islamists working on their own domestic plots who have not travelled to Iraq or Syria, could therefore number in the high hundreds or low thousands.

The next element of the fifth column are the sympathisers of the violent Islamists who, although not willing to endanger their own lives, may be willing to aid and abet them in their deeds. This group is likely to be considerably larger, numbering at least in the low thousands. This brings us to the third element, the political Islamists, who could be divided into those who are active members of organisations and supporters of campaigns pursuing an Islamist agenda, and their passive supporters. The first group will contain many more individuals than those currently willing to pursue violent means, with the pool of potential passive supporters being massive, numbering at the very least in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

In October 2014, the Times reported that a Populus poll of 2,000 ‘British’ adults revealed that one in seven had “warm feelings” towards ISIS, with support being at its highest level amongst the under 25s. If one were to extrapolate from these figures to the general population, this would imply that circa 9.2 million adults in our country look upon the Islamist regime in question favourably. Quite clearly, one would correctly think that the majority of those who do so are Muslim. The pool of support for Islamism in the UK is therefore several million strong, including, in all likelihood, the majority of the practising doctrinaire Muslim population. This is the size of the potential fifth column.

In France, it would seem that things are even worse, with their fifth column being larger still. A poll carried out in France in August 2014 reported that 16% of the French population were favourably disposed towards ISIS. How can this be? Do French non-Muslims really have a favourable view of ISIS? If this poll is to believe, over 10 million French citizens possess such views, far higher than the generally accepted figure of 4.7 million for the number of Muslims in France.

I can appreciate that many readers will think that I and others who share my concerns regarding this issue will believe me to be unduly ‘alarmist’, even ‘paranoid’, but committed minorities can, and do, bend the societies in which they live to fit their agendas. Depressingly, the tipping point seems to set in once the committed minority reaches 10% of a given population as one piece of recent research would appear to demonstrate:

‘Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.’

In France, the UK and Germany, we are not that far away from such a tipping point with our Muslim populations. This is why the warnings of Pegida need to be heeded, and the Front National must make headway in France before it is too late (although of late Marine Le Pen has been criticised for being too accommodating to Islam. One prominent FN MEP – Aymeric Chauprade – has released a video in which he declares that France is now at war with some Muslims, but “not Muslims in general.” The video and an accompanying article can be found at the Galliwatch blog). What will we do in the UK? Who wants to return to the Middle Ages? Not me.

Europe’s Cuckoos all a-twitter: ‘Je suis Kouachi’

Last night, the Belgian website sudinfo.be ran an article claiming that the top-trending twitter hashtags for Friday 9 January were #JeSuisCoulibaly and #JeSuisKouachi, which, as it notes, presents a rather ‘less positive message’ than the original #JeSuisCharlie that they were modelled upon. That these hashtags proved to be more popular raises the concern that support for their aims, if perhaps not necessarily their methods, amongst large swathes of the Muslim population in Europe is widespread.  

It should be abundantly clear by now, that doctrinaire Islam neither permits nor recognises the principles of freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and that the more people that there are in our countries who hold these views, the less secure our freedoms become. It should now also be equally clear, that this is not some esoteric intellectual debate less relevant to our everyday lives than the economic crisis through which we are living, for it is not only cartoonists, writers and thinkers who are threatened by Islamism, but everyone who does not submit to Islam. All Islamists, irrespective of whether they employ violence or strictly ideological and political methods, desire our submission. It is time that we made clear that we will not submit, and that there should be no place for such people in France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, or anywhere else in Europe. A minority of Europeans are bravely protesting and speaking out against the increasing Islamisation of their countries, in the face of unfounded accusations of racism, and the contempt of the leaderships of those political parties who have long advocated and encouraged large-scale immigration from overseas, irrespective of the values of the incoming population.  

Our message against Islamisation must be heard, taken seriously and acted upon. The Islamic cuckoo is growing restive in its European nest, and these tweets should awaken us to the fact that it must no longer be fed and nurtured with ever more emollient words and concessions, but instead ejected.

 

 

Meet the Islamoantipatheists

Following the many comments made in response to my review of 'Make Me a Muslim', it struck me that it would make more sense to reply to the points in the form of an article rather than individually, owing to the overlapping nature of their content. This will also provide the opportunity to clarify some of my thoughts on the programme, the agenda it seeks to articulate, and Islamic doctrine and practice more generally.

Some readers of the review were evidently new visitors to the blog, and found the tone and content of what was presented here unpalatable. To them I offer not an apology, but a call for them to respect the right to freedom of thought, speech and expression; neither I, nor many of my regular blog readers, will bow to your demands to submit to your system of belief, whether it happens to be Islam or politically correct self-censorship. Intellectual pluralism is essential to the survival of any free society, and the right to criticise, ridicule and expose the negative aspects of doctrine, whether it happens to be religious or political, should not only be promoted, but demanded. For those affronted by what was written, I can only say that I and my regular readers are tired of your constant carping and belligerent insistence that we shut up and comply with your set of randomly assembled superstitiously sanctioned beliefs and cultural practices.

Upon the basis of reading one review, a number of ‘the affronted’ have managed to divine, apparently, the very essence of my being as well as my educational background and life experience, which they bizarrely adjudge to be of an exceptionally limited and ‘ignorant’ nature. The natural and frequent accompaniment to the word ‘ignorant’ is the term ‘bigot’, which given the undoubtedly bigoted position of those who have here freely employed that word, is deliciously paradoxical. Let me draw to their attention what the noun ‘bigot’ actually denotes: an individual who adheres to their opinions about something or someone and fails to modify these in light of evidence and logic that undermines the said opinions. A bigot is someone imbued with absolute certainty, or, to translate this into religious language, ‘faith’, and there exists no branch of humanity more self-assuredly and aggressively bigoted as doctrinaire Muslims who adhere to the literal ‘truth’ of the Qur’an and its associated traditions contained in the Hadith.

Not all people born into a Muslim background are doctrinaire, and thus are not bigoted fundamentalists. Indeed, the presenter of the programme – the personable Shanna – appeared to fall into this category. One new visitor laughably asked if I realised that I was being ‘anti-Islamic’: of course I was being anti-Islamic, for I see nothing of value in Islam that cannot be found outside of it, whereas conversely, I see much within that belief system that is backwards, vicious and deeply repressive. As for those who trot out the tired old line that you cannot judge the religion because: a) you don’t understand it; b) you’ve not studied it enough; c) you’re taking verses, beliefs or practices out of context; d) the Qur’an cannot be properly understood in translation, I say this: stop this blatant practice of deception and Dawah! We have no reason to waste our time toiling through your turgid self-justificatory celebration of misogynist irrationalism, cobbled together from the garbled leftovers of Judaism and Christianity with a bit of additional contradiction and hatred thrown in for good measure by way of original material. So, one of you did not like the fact that I described Allah as ‘a wily old fox’? What of it? It was a humorous remark. Given that he does not exist, it matters not how I refer to this hate-filled fictitious entity; you ought to be thankful that I did not refer to him in a more scatological fashion.

For those readers who describe themselves as ‘Muslims’ I ask them to take the ‘Quiz for Muslims’ at the following link, and to look at the vitriolic comments – from Muslims – that this quiz has elicited, for to date, not one of them has finished it. However, whereas it contains nothing offensive whatsoever, it does compel Muslims to reflect upon an unsavoury aspect of their ‘prophet’s’ biography which is accepted by Muslims to be ‘true’. Provide me with a straight and honest answer, and I will be impressed. This exercise will unfailingly differentiate decent people with a humane outlook on life, from those who deserve not to be trusted. So far as branches of Islam go, those who follow the Baha’i tradition would appear to possess a more decent and humane approach than those who do not.

Those who control language, control the debate

As some of my regulars have pointed out, use of the terms ‘Islamophobic’, ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘Islamophobe’ is heavily politicised, with these three words having been coined with the purposeful intent of waging a cultural war against freedom of speech and expression. These words are designed to stigmatise individuals and groups critical of Islam and to shut down debate through implying that dislike of Islam is irrational, thereby facilitating the spread of Islam. Moreover, they are typically deployed in association with an array of words and their cognates that already possess a long pedigree of eliciting a negative emotional reaction in residents of western countries: ‘racist’, ‘bigoted’, ‘intolerant’, ‘hate-speech’, ‘fascist’, ‘extremist’ and ‘far-right’. It matters not to those who employ such language that the vast majority of their targets will not deserve any of these labels, for they know that mud sticks, and that if they repeatedly use these terms in close association, then significant sections of the public will be convinced that those seeking to defend their liberties and way of life are actually ‘fascists’, which is a complete inversion of reality; a form of Islamist and Leftist Newspeak.

Catuvellaunian proposed a neologism of his own derived from Classical Greek which rather appeals, for unlike ‘Islamophobia’ it accurately encapsulates a position that he, I and many others share: Islamoantipatheia – a dislike of Islam. We are Islamoantipatheists, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it is nonetheless a term that deserves to be popularised, for whoever controls language, controls the debate. We are engaged in a cultural struggle, and it is a struggle that we must win. It is clear however, that we will not be able to rely upon the BBC to give us a fair hearing, for it is intent upon normalising and extending the influence of Islam. Why? As Ruth has pointed out, the Corporation is legally obliged to be impartial, but alas, it is clearly nothing of the sort.

‘Make Me a Muslim’, ‘World Hijab Day’, Halal Prison Food Outrage: The BBC's Week

One of the ‘affronted’ did not like my alleged insinuation that Aaqil Ahmed is a Muslim, which is odd, because he is a Muslim and is publicly declared to be such. I knew this when writing the piece, but chose not to state this and thereby encourage readers to search for more information on the man themselves and draw their own conclusions. He however, is not responsible for the all-pervasive pro-Islamic slant of the BBC’s output, for it is simply something that is deeply ingrained in the Corporation, with this week providing a particularly good example of this fact with the screening of ‘Make Me a Muslim’ on BBC3 on Wednesday and the promotion of ‘World Hijab Day’ on Friday – both focusing on and seeking to normalise non-Muslim women either accepting Islam or adopting associated cultural practices – and then yesterday running an outraged story over unspecified traces of pork being discovered in a number of halal prison pies and pasties. Why is so much uncritical attention being devoted to Islam? Is the BBC similarly outraged that the majority of non-Muslims are not notified when halal meat is sold to them in supermarkets or in restaurants? I cannot recall any outpouring of horror on the BBC’s part, can you? Why not? Halal slaughter is barbaric, end of story (cue idiotic comments appearing below about how halal slaughter has been ‘scientifically proven’ to be less stressful/painful for the animal, etc, etc).

The BBC is in the main staffed and governed by people who have fallen hook line and sinker for the fallacious set of assertions that ‘Islamophobia’ is akin to racism and that as a consequence we are never more than a hair’s breadth away from cattle trucks and the mass extermination of Muslims. Baseless rubbish of course, but it is a paranoid anti-British fantasy that courses through the veins of the Corporation, meshing with associated delusional narratives that feed into reflex assertions that anyone who objects to EU membership is a ‘xenophobe’, and those who oppose mass immigration are ‘racists’. The legislation subsequent to the wrongheaded Macpherson Report must bear a significant amount of the responsibility for this intrinsic bias, but what else may be at play? The Cranmer blog has something very interesting to say on this score.

‘Make Me a Muslim’: Superficial? What other factors were at play?

In the review I made reference to the above programme hiding more than it revealed, by which I meant that it failed to look at anything other than the most superficial proximate reasons for the adoption of Islam by the women it featured, and even then, the individual biographical and psychological details that were made available were sketchy. What it failed to analyse was the wider political, social and informational context within which these individuals had made their choices, and how their biographies and psychologies had been structured by radically different educational and social experiences, to those encountered by those of us belonging to older generations.

All of those featured were in their twenties and thus would have been no older than their early teens when Blair came to power in 1997; moreover, Claire and Inaya were 24, which means that they will only have been 8 or 9 at the time. They will thus have progressed through a schooling system in which the teaching of history was altered so radically as to strip out any sense of national narrative and continuity, focusing instead upon a disjointed heavily politicised and globalised curriculum imbued with a deep sense of cultural relativism – as a value system rather than a technique – and an ingrained anti-westernism. Coupled with this, they have grown up in the era following the implementation of the recommendations of the Macpherson Report, its invention of the concept of ‘institutional racism’ and attendant set of ‘diversity’ policies that demand ‘respect’ for ‘minorities’ and invoke a misplaced sense of racial and cultural guilt on the part of all native Britons. We have also seen the introduction of so-called racial and religious hatred legislation that has cowed critics of Islam and Islamisation.

These young women would have been approaching their early teens at the time of 9/11 and the subsequent reassertion of Islamic identity that occurred in the UK amongst immigrants from Muslim countries and their offspring in particular, a reassertion that was accompanied by a BBC going into overdrive to accommodate Islam and to make it appear unthreatening, ‘normal’, and just part of natural everyday life in the UK. This was a decade during which Saudi financial influence helped to proselytise Wahhabism in the UK through the funding of new mosques, madrassahs and the distribution of Saudi-printed literature, an influence that was also feared in nominally traditional Muslim states that were now in effect secular.

The Blair era and beyond also witnessed unprecedented levels of mass immigration into the UK and an explosion in the Muslim population, and whilst his administration promoted the dissolution of national identity as popular culture became obsessed with the vacuity of celebrity, Islam was permitted and encouraged to embed itself and to grow, developing a greater sense of security and self-confidence. In sum, might it not be that to a certain extent, the young British converts encountered in ‘Make Me a Muslim’ were a sign of a deep social malaise, a loss of confidence and identity amongst many young Britons fostered by the interweaving factors outlined above? If so, how tragic it should be that they chose to adopt such a backward and negative system of belief and practice. Such factors and the questions that they raise however, did not inform ‘Make Me a Muslim’, which thus remained a deeply unsatisfying programme undeserving of the title ‘documentary’.

BBC promotes ‘Hijab for a day’

It often seems that there is nothing British about the BBC other than the money that pays for the licence fee. Am I being facetious? A little, perhaps, but then again the tenor of some BBC programming – BBC3’s ‘Make Me a Muslim’ on Wednesday for example – and its promotion today of the‘Hijab for a day’ initiative does raise significant questions regarding its cultural agenda, for as far as the Corporation is concerned, it would seem that the island of Britain is little other than a geographical space. With respect to this island’s native inhabitants – whom the BBC repeatedly asserts do not exist – its aim often appears not to be the celebration, promotion and protection of their cultures, but of their thoroughgoing deculturisation and absorption either into a transnational cosmopolitanism or even Islam. Its promotion of ‘Hijab for a day’ fits neatly into this programme of deculturisation and alienation of Britons from Britain. 

What is ‘World Hijab Day’? What could be its purpose? Who dreamt it up, and why? The BBC informs us that it was the brainchild of New York Muslim Nazma Khan who wishes to ‘counteract’ controversies about the hijab and Muslim veiling in general: 

It encourages non-Muslim women (or even Muslim women who do not ordinarily wear one) to don the hijab and experience what it’s like to do so, as part of a bid to foster better understanding.

That is the official line of course, but in reality, as any sentient being can see, this is a straightforward method of normalising the presence of Islam and a step towards Islamic proselytisation – Dawah – on a grand scale. As such, it could be interpreted as an act of cultural imperialism and a celebration of Muslim misogyny. The question that really deserves to be asked is this: why is the BBC so persistent in promoting this misogynist system of belief and associated cultural practices? Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s Head of Religion and Ethics will have a role to play in this of course, but to lay the blame upon this one man would be totally misplaced and unfair, for the cultural self-loathing of which this is but one expression is deeply rooted within the BBC. If the BBC really cared about the rights of women, it would be promoting the following: ‘World Non-Hijab Day’, a day upon which women around the world who normally wear a veil cast it off for the day ‘and experience what it’s like to do so, as part of a bid to foster better understanding.’ When will we see mass unveilings in Saudi Arabia? Now, that really would be newsworthy! Shall we start a campaign for such a day? Women everywhere deserve it. 

The BBC should be called to account for its persistent promotion of misogyny, for under the guise of religious 'tolerance', it is attempting to compel us to accept the intolerable.

The BBC says: "Women! Know your place!"

Review: BBC3 ‘Make Me a Muslim’

A few years ago Channel 4 ran a short series of exactly the same title, but this one-off on BBC3 chose a different tack which proved to be even more trying than its predecessor. Still, although it was painful to watch, it was probably no more annoying than what followed it: the perennially unfunny Russell Howard.

‘Make Me a Muslim’ failed to be engaging. Like the young converts that it featured, it seemed to be covering up and keeping hidden far more than it was revealing. Although looking at the recent phenomenon of conversion to Islam in Britain, particularly amongst indigenous British women, the show (to call it a documentary would be a little too grandiose for what we were offered) was centred upon a 26-year-old model from a Pakistani background – Shanna – who described herself as “British”, “Westernised” and “a modern Muslim”. She freely admitted that she does not practise Islam much, and posed the question as to why young British women should choose to adopt a religion which imposes so many restrictions upon their hitherto free lives.

Throughout the programme, a narrator provided commentary in addition to the questions posed and opinions voiced by Shanna and her interviewees, setting out, presumably, to attempt to explain why an estimated 5,000 converted to Islam in the UK last year, with over half being white and three quarters of these women. Alas, as the programme progressed, it appeared that the personable Shanna was increasingly beginning to question her westernised approach, and by the end she was stating: “I kind of feel really weird” and “I feel a bit lost”, meaning that it had made her realise that she had been neglecting her faith. This was rather sad really, given that this young woman had already borne the brunt of an extremely nasty hate campaign from a number of Muslims for attempting to enter Miss Universe. The abusers routinely described her as a “whore”, and she received death threats, including threats of decapitation. To see her inclining towards a greater embrace of the backward misogynist belief system that nurtures such views was thus depressing.

Returning to the equally dispiriting matter of the indigenous converts, four were featured in the programme, as well as an Edinburgh resident of African background. One of the converts, rather like Yvonne Ridley, had affected a pseudo-Pakistani accent, and all of the indigenous four had donned the drab apparel of the ‘devout’ and ‘modest’ female Muslim. Seeing them coo about headscarves and other shapeless defeminising garments made me momentarily wish that the BBC3 crew would parachute in Gok Wan to give them a wardrobe makeover, but no, we had to stick with “the halalised” wardrobe as one of them put it.

The first young woman visited, 24-year-old Claire, lived in Bridgend with her parents, and said that she had been attracted to Islam because she is “quite conservative”, doesn’t like getting drunk and likes to dress “modestly” (did you hear that Gok?). As a consequence, the locals understandably look upon her as something of an oddity, a number of them, she says, thinking of her as being “a traitor”, which in a sense is rather a fair description given the fact that she has chosen to figuratively spit in the face of her own freedom-loving culture.

She formally converted to Islam last year, but her mode of dress had changed beforehand and she had affectedly decided to change her name, as would appear to be de rigueur in such cases, to Sophia. For her “All this stuff about women being oppressed [by Islam] is complete codswallop.” By this time, I was finding her mannered approach to this adopted belief system a little vexatious, as was her poor father who’s told her that Islam is a different culture: “but I did tell her, she is Welsh. At the end of the day, she’s got pretty hair, curly, like her old man. She’s got no reason to hide it, has she?”

Sound advice from dad, but this late-onset equivalent of teen rebellion won’t allow her to open her ears to him of course. Her poor mother, Gill, looked awkward when asked how the family felt about her daughter’s conversion, for she acknowledged that other family members weren’t happy. She said that she had read the Qur’an and didn’t see it as being that different from the Bible, and viewed its system of belief as being akin to “the old-fashioned Christian way”. It’s understandable that a mother should not wish to lose her daughter, so let’s just hope that she’s hanging on in there waiting for Claire to resurface once the Sophia identity is a spent force.

Shanna next travelled to Scotland to meet Alana, “a traveller, not a gypsy” by background, who converted two years ago. The media student really misses Parma ham, but following an encounter in Lanzarote all pork products are now haram, for it was there that she met Abdul, her fiancé, who introduced her to Islam. She has decided that they will have two weddings: one Muslim and one British, although nobody will be allowed to drink at the latter (so, come to think of it, the ‘British’ wedding will be Muslim too, and all the worse for it). Abdul will be pleased though, as he’ll acquire the right to a shiny new UK passport.

Alana was one of those people who possesses a ‘god-shaped hole’, but unfortunately in this instance, that wily old fox Allah appears to have crept into it and bedded down, at least for the time being. For ‘fun’, she likes to attend a weekly Islamic studies class, which scandalously takes place upon the premises of an alleged centre of learning – a university. There, she quaffs heady drafts of Quranic history and Shariah law. She would also like to study Arabic. Abdul will be delighted, particularly when this scintillating stuff of conversation is added to her ultra-drab halal wardrobe. With an existence like that, no wonder so many Muslims don’t appear to be that keen on life.  

Convert number three was named Lisa. She lives somewhere in the South (did somebody mention Slough? I can’t remember. If so, it’s probably best not to quote Betjeman’s most famous verse though: “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough”). Married to a Pakistani seven years back, she got around to converting to Islam one year ago. Although she has three daughters and lives at home with them, she has never sat in the same room as her in-laws and the local Pakistani residents shun her owing to their intensely clannish racism and their preference for first-cousin marriage. Indeed, her ‘husband’ was already married to someone genetically near and dear when they ‘married’, so she is wife number two. Bigamy is of course illegal in this country, but anyone who works for the DSS in certain parts of Britain will of course be aware of a surprising number of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ‘single’ mothers claiming an impressive array of benefits for an ever-increasing number of children. Given that Lisa stays at home to look after the children, she may well be classed as one of these ‘single’ mothers and thus be claiming benefits upon the most dubious of grounds.

Lisa however, does not like being a “co-wife”, and she and wife number one really don’t get on. They loathe the sight of each other in fact, and unsurprisingly, do not live under the same roof. Why did she convert to Islam? Who knows? Does it sound like she’d have a rational reason? Not really. Does her husband care? Does anyone? By this stage of the programme I was seriously flagging. It was very, very dull viewing, but it was about to get duller: cue a trip to a small northern town in Greater Manchester to meet Inaya (I can’t remember what her real name was).

Inaya is not happy because she cannot find a Muslim husband and works in a call centre in Accrington (although to be fair, she did not cite the call centre job as a source of her unhappiness). She converted four years ago at the age of 22 “after going through a difficult time . . . [a] rough patch at home”. Why? She decided to convert as she thought that she would not be happy otherwise. That’s not really an answer, is it? Still, never mind. So, is she happy now? As stated at the beginning of this paragraph, she is not happy, as she cannot find a spouse. Of course she cannot find a spouse, for she has converted to Islam. For most males of the species that’s a pretty massive turnoff.

Inaya has been to Muslim speeddating events where prospective matches have been accompanied by their scowling parents who have been happy to notify her that she is variously too old, too tall and also likely to give up Islam (too white and thus fit only for a bit of casual ‘fun’?). As for online dating, she has found that Muslim ‘guys’ just want to have ‘fun’. Well, well, well. Indeed, so exciting has her new life as a Muslim proven to be, that her best friend has also converted, but we didn’t get to hear much about what she’s now not doing in her existence which was formerly a life.

Shanna next went to Edinburgh to speak to an African model named Aisha, but at that point it seems that I lapsed into a momentary coma, my senses dulled by nigh on fifty minutes of banal tedium. Why did BBC3 screen this? What was the point? As a piece of television, it did not work, and as a piece of social commentary, it was distinctly unsatisfying. Might it not have something to do with the fact that the BBC’s Head of Religion and Ethics is a certain Aaqil Ahmed? Now, which religion do you think he favours promoting? Does it give you a warm glow knowing that you have to pay for this propagandist nonsense to be made and broadcast? Bring back ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’! As for the bunch in the programme this evening, my recommendation would be as follows: avoid! Evidence of more pro-Islamic BBC bias can be found here in connection with its promotion of 'World Hijab Day'.

For a response to the many comments below, see Meet the Islamoantipatheists.

Aaqil Ahmed: BBC Head of Religion and Ethics

Lady with a Lapdog (with apologies to Anton Chekhov)

For many of you, the routine of the cramped commute to and from work will be a familiar experience. Now and again, if you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself seated, whilst those less fortunate cram into the aisles and steady themselves as best they can. Considering the tightly packed and often uncomfortably warm conditions on such services, passengers generally treat their fellows with respect and consideration, although on occasion tempers can flair when those of a tetchy disposition give vent to their dissatisfaction. Thus it was one night last week that the following incident took place on a train about to embark upon its regular journey, linking a number of our northern towns.

The service was busy, and all seats were taken. Some faces were familiar, others not so, and most people had settled down into their early evening routine of texting, surfing the net, listening to music, and amongst other things, staring vacantly into space. A number of people were even engaged in that now seemingly quaintly old-fashioned but agreeable pastime of reading a book in its physical form. For a change, nobody within earshot was speaking at volume into their mobile phone about familial minutiae, their health ailments or pretending to broker an important work deal. All in all, it was a quiet evening, or so it seemed until a voice exploded against the shuffling, sneezing, page-rustling backdrop. I turned my head. Dozens of pairs of ears pricked up.

“Do you mind?!”

“I’m sorry?”

“Get your dog away from me!”

“He’s alright.”

“Get it away from me!”

“He doesn’t bite.”

“Get it away from me! Get it away! It’s dirty!”

I saw an angry face framed in black, eyes glowering with disgust, glaring towards a woman in late middle age, clutching a small and perfectly harmless dog; evidently, her much-loved pet, but regarded by the indignant black-cloaked figure with as much affection as a witchfinder would have possessed for a solitary old woman’s ‘familiar’. The dog had not touched the scowling woman in black, and neither had it breathed upon her. Its mere proximity was sufficient to prompt the outpourings of an intolerant religious zealot; a scriptural literalist revelling in her power to impose her bigoted opinions without fear of challenge because of her ‘minority’ status. What an ugly scene this was.

The lady with the lapdog, clearly upset, moved away, carrying her pet back into a more crowded part of the train, whilst the woman in black sat and scowled. She scowls still, for she is a regular on this service, and her character and cast of mind appear not to be of a sunny disposition. It is owing to this shameful behaviour that her picture, taken moments after the outburst described, has been posted below. The attitudes displayed by the woman in black and the aggressively assertive manner in which they were expressed, are at one with those found in a video entitled ‘Muslim Patrol’ created by some of her co-religionists in London, which portrays a group of intimidating vigilantes seeking to impose Islamic law one Saturday night. It seems that Anjem Choudary’s group was behind this, for one of the voices on the video very closely resembles his. Youtube removed this video, declaring that it had sought to ‘harass, bully or threaten’. However, it can still be viewed on The Daily Mail website here. 

"Get it away from me!" Islamist bigotry on the evening commute.

 

Shotton Colliery ‘Muslim Education Centre’ Poll Results

Whilst being aware that Ed Miliband has delivered a speech on immigration in which he attempted to look ‘concerned’ at the same time as he extolled the ‘virtues’ of the transformation that mass immigration has wrought in our country in recent years, I shall leave my thoughts on its content until a later post. This evening, it is instead time to look at the results of a poll opened up to blog readers a fortnight ago on the so-called ‘Muslim Education Centre’ that has been given planning permission to open in the village of Shotton Colliery.

As of this evening, the article on the EDL protest at Shotton Colliery on Saturday 1 December had attracted 1,537 page views, but only 134 visitors to the blog felt moved to participate in the associated poll. Regular readers will be aware that although many who visit the blog do so because they find its content broadly to their taste, quite a few most certainly do not. Given that the sample for this poll is self-selecting, it is completely unscientific and I will thus not seek to draw any wide-ranging conclusions from it other than the fact that it will provide a reasonably accurate gauge of readers’ feelings relating to this issue over the past fortnight.

The poll itself posed a question – ‘What do you think of Shotton Colliery’s proposed ‘Muslim Education Centre’?’ – which was followed by a number of statements that respondents could either agree with or ignore. Each respondent could participate in the poll only once, but multiple answers could be ticked.

The two questions that opened the poll revealed strong opposition to the centre, which was not a surprise: ‘I oppose it’ – 96 votes (71%); ‘I support it’ – 16 votes (11%). The remaining statements are ranked below in order of their popularity:

• MP Grahame Morris should publicly condemn the proposed centre – 56 votes (41%).

• It is intended to pave the way for a larger Muslim population in Shotton Colliery – 53 votes (39%).

• We need a political party to back us in our campaign against this centre – 46 votes (34%).

• Its backers wish to use it to convert people to Islam – 44 votes (32%).

• I am willing to campaign against the centre – 37 (27%).

• I am willing to campaign for the centre – 6 votes (4%).

It was interesting to see that so many respondents thought that the local MP ought to come out against the centre and make a public statement to that effect, when in fact he has done precisely the opposite. If these 53 respondents could all write to Grahame Morris asking him to make such a public condemnation, whilst highlighting that they, their families and friends would not consider voting for him unless he did so, this could cause the MP something of a headache, although in all likelihood it would prompt him to issue a statement condemning ‘far-right’ agitators in his constituency.

Well over a third of respondents think that one of the centre’s functions will be to pave the way for an increase in the size of the village’s Muslim population, and just over a third want a political party to help campaign against the centre’s presence. Only marginally less – 32% - think that another core function of the centre will be to seek to convert locals, yet despite a strong sense of opposition towards this development only 27% of respondents stated that they are willing to actively campaign against it. The only small crumb of comfort that they can glean in this respect is that a mere 4% of the sample would be willing to campaign on its behalf.

Overall therefore, readers do not wish to see a ‘Muslim Education Centre’ in Shotton Colliery and instead would like local political figures to take a lead in opposing it, which is unlikely to happen. However, as in any such instance, only a certain proportion of those who hold such views are willing and/or able to become actively involved in making their opposition known. As for the comments attendant upon the Shotton Colliery protest article, it was often difficult to divine whether a number of them were genuine or had been fabricated by troublemakers, and there was a lack of clarity with respect to the identities of some of the commenters who posted anonymously, which made it difficult to know whether or not comments should be retained or removed owing to disputed ‘identities’. As we are fast approaching the festive season it is to be assumed that the next protest in the village will not take place until some point in 2013, and if another such protest does take place, what angle will its organisers choose to take, and what, if any, prospect of success will lie before it?  

Bradford’s Muslim Population Explosion

In an article written in July after the release of the initial raw headline results from the 2011 Census, I noted how the highest population increases in the country appeared to take place in the boroughs possessing the largest Muslim populations, and today’s release of census results relating to religion appear to confirm this supposition. In July I observed that Tower Hamlets and Newham were recorded as displaying the greatest rate of population increase between 2001 and 2011, and today’s results state that Tower Hamlets has the highest share of Muslims in the country, and Newham the second, with the percentages standing at respectively 34.5% and 32.0%.

In Yorkshire, Bradford had experienced the fastest population growth, and once again I had attributed this to its growing Muslim population. This latter supposition also seems to be borne out by the statistics, for whereas the city’s Muslim population was recorded at 16.08% in 2001, the 2011 census reveals this percentage to have increased to 24.7%, making it the borough with the fourth largest share of Muslims in the country. Blackburn and Darwen, with 27.0%, stood in third place. Luton, the birthplace of the EDL, possessed the fifth highest concentration of Muslims at 24.6%. Across England and Wales as a whole, the number of Muslims increased rapidly during this 10-year period to a total of 2.7 million, its proportion of the population exploding from 3.0 to 4.8%.

The Muslim share of Bradford's population has risen by 53.6% in just ten years. Demographic Islamisation is thus a reality in England today, and the greater the number that profess that faith, the louder will be the calls for it to be protected and for the admission of co-religionists from overseas. Overall, what with London now being not only a minority English but also a minority British city, the census results make for grim reading.

Bradford Today, Bradford on Avon Tomorrow?

Islam and Youth Offenders: is there a link?

Earlier this week a number of different papers ran a story connected to the announcement that the proportion of male offenders in young offender institutions had risen sharply to 21% of the total, with the further observation that 42% of the prison body in this category came from what were termed ‘black and minority ethnic communities’. What might these figures suggest, and is there a link between an increased propensity to criminality in England and Wales and the profession of Islam?

What strikes the reader immediately with respect to these figures is the very high proportion of offenders not only self-reporting as Muslim, but those who are non-indigenous. Why should this be? One of the reasons, although the figures from the 2011 census relating to religion and ethnicity have yet to be released, is that the share of such groups in the younger population of England in particular, and Wales to a lesser extent, has skyrocketed in recent years, but this in itself is unlikely to account for these percentages, as such figures, excepting certain urban areas, will not proportionately correspond to the composition of the population as a whole. Clearly, other factors are at play.

In terms of the overall numbers, according to the Daily Mail the offender population aged 15 to 18 numbered 1,543 ‘by the end of 2011/12’, which was down from 1,822 in the preceding year, whereas the Guardian notes that four years ago the total stood at 2,365. The proportion of males identifying themselves as Muslim has increased from 13% in 2009-10 to 16% in 2010-11 to 21% in the recent ‘annual review of children and young people in custody’.  Both the Mail and the Guardian observed that a significant proportion – around a third – of the overall offender population in this category had stated that they had been in care for at least part of their childhood.

What neither of these reports provide us with is information pertaining to the types of offences committed by those held in young offender institutions, or an indication as to whether the nature of offences was to a greater or lesser extent associated with religion and ethnicity. Is there something distinct about the type of offences committed by Muslim young offenders when compared to their non-Muslim equivalents? What proportion of the self-reported Muslim offenders were converts? Although it is likely that the percentage of the latter is low given the age group under consideration, it has been observed that in the mainstream prison system an increasing number of prisoners have been converting to Islam because of the contacts, ‘protection’ and perceived ‘privileges’ that belonging to Muslim gangs can afford.

It would be useful also to see which ethnic backgrounds these young Muslim offenders hail from. Are they predominantly from the longer established Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations, or from amongst more recent Muslim arrivals to this country such as Somalis and Afghans? Whatever the case, it would seem that their self-identification as Muslims legitimises in their eyes the perception that their transgression of the law is not such a serious matter, given that our laws are not based upon the Sharia. Although no firm conclusion can be drawn given the incomplete nature of the data at hand, the significant overrepresentation of Muslims amongst this segment of the prison population – as in the prison population more widely, not only in England and Wales, but elsewhere in Europe – is suggestive of a deep-seated lack of respect for, and identification with, the host society and its values. 

Aylesbury Young Offender Institution

Islam – Nein danke!

The National Secular Society (NSS) has this week drawn attention to a poll conducted by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the subject of which was German attitudes towards Islam and Muslims. Its findings illustrate that, quite justly, the majority of Germans do not look favourably upon Islamic doctrine, and the NSS article notes that the attitudes in this poll differ little from those displayed in one of a similar nature conducted in May 2006. However, it is a great pity that details relating to the size of the sample size, its composition and the timing of the research was omitted not only from the NSS piece, but also from the original FAZ article.

The paper, somewhat dramatically, calls the results of the poll “catastrophic”. Why? It is clearly making a value judgement with respect to the opinions and attitudes of ordinary Germans, and presumably, owing to its use of the word “catastrophic”, finds that many Germans lack the politically correct view of Islam that the paper would wish to endorse and promote.

A total of 21 statements on Islam were offered to respondents who had to select which ‘most closely reflected their opinion’. The NSS article summarised some of the key findings as follows:

83% of them think that Islam is associated with impairing women’s rights; 77% thought Islam was a literalist religion; 70% said Islam is associated with religious fanaticism and radicalism. A significant part of Germany’s population also believes that Islam is ready for violence (64%), hatred (60%), active missionary activity (56%), and striving for political influence (56%). Only 13% of respondents associate Islam with love for neighbours, 12% with charity and 7% with openness and tolerance.

These results do not differ much from a similar poll conducted in May 2006, although that poll was taken at the height of the Mohammed cartoons controversy.

Why are such findings deemed to be controversial when there are clearly strong factual underpinnings for all of the ‘negative’ opinions about Islam listed above? It would be far more worrying were members of the German public not to hold these generally factually correct views about Islam.

With respect to the question “Do you think tension in relations with Muslims will grow in Germany in the nearest future and should we be afraid of it?” only 29% of respondents believed that there was no threat. However, it is not clear what percentage of the sample was Muslim and non-ethnically German, so it is probable that the figure supporting this statement amongst ethnic Germans was higher than the 71% cited. Overall, the poll is of interest insofar as it gives us a suggestion as to the general public mood in Germany with respect to Islam, but it is a great pity that details relating to the size and composition of the sample have been omitted. Further results from the FAZ article can be accessed at the NSS article here.

EDL Shotton Colliery Demo

Today the EDL held a demo in the village of Shotton Colliery in County Durham. The protest was prompted by the decision of a locally resident businessman named Kaiser Choudry to transform a closed pub into what has been described as ‘a Muslim education centre’.

Given the name of the village, it will come as no surprise to the reader that it grew up around the eponymous pit which was closed by the NCB in the early 1970s with the loss of around 800 jobs. The village has never recovered from this swingeing economic blow, and the proposed ‘Muslim education centre’, which was once the Melrose Arms, is but one of eight former local pubs that have now been shut. Clearly, what Shotton Colliery requires is economic investment and job opportunities, not such a pointless entity as a ‘Muslim education centre’.

The pointlessness and unwelcome nature of such an intrusion into the life of an English village was overlooked by the Hartlepool Mail, which naturally chose to cover the story from a pro-Muslim perspective under the heading of ‘Muslims fear EDL demo’. Apparently, the village is home to five or six Muslim families. Presumably they are all familiar with Islam, so why would Shotton Colliery require a ‘Muslim education centre’? Obviously, it does not, and is simply intended as a base for Islamic proselytisation – dawa – amongst the resident English population. There is nothing favourable that can be said either about such an intent or this specific move, so the EDL were certainly right to demonstrate in this instance, for such a centre can bring good to nobody. The less that Islamic doctrine is preached and spread in our country, so much the better for all. 

Residents of the village should be aware that Easington MP Grahame Morris has sided with the proponents of the Muslim propaganda centre. At the very least, those who object to its presence should write to him and complain about his stance, asking him directly what benefit he thinks such a proselytising mission centre could possibly confer upon the area and the lives of local residents. There is nothing positive in Islamic doctrine that cannot be found in any other faith or general system of ethical conduct, but there is much in it that is inherently negative and inimical to the public good. We do not need more Islam in Britain, but less of it. We should not grant planning permission for Muslim mission centres. It would be better if the former Melrose Arms were to be bulldozed.

As for the turnout at the demo today, there has been scant information, although one opponent of the EDL, a self-styled ‘anti-fascist’ claimed in a tweet that some 200 EDL turned up in Shotton. On the other side of the divide, someone named Peter Sloan asserted that there were between 500 and 600 EDL and locals demonstrating against the proposed Muslim centre. From the picture of the demo below, it is impossible to estimate numbers, as it only shows part of the crowd. If you were in Shotton today, what were your impressions of the protest? Were you for it, or against it? What happened? Feel free to leave comments below, because the press will not report it in an objective fashion. A poll has been added to the blog column on the right where you can make clear your opinion on Shotton's proposed 'Muslim education centre'. Multiple answers can be submitted, and the poll will close on 21 December. It will be interesting to see what readers think.

UPDATE:

On 2 December the Sunday Sun reported that two men were arrested at the demo ‘for breach of bail conditions’ and cited a police estimate of the number of EDL present as 200. However, it is not clear as to whether or not this figure also included locals who turned out to protest against the proposed ‘Muslim education centre’. The article also noted that Durham County Council has already ‘received a 102-signature petition and 13 letters against the conversion.’ Clearly, much more opposition will need to be effectively marshalled to put an end to this plan for the former Melrose Arms. According to the Hartlepool Mail, which decided to describe the demonstrators as 'far-right extremists' in its Sunday edition, Durham County Council has already approved plans for the centre to go ahead. Are you a local resident who opposes this centre? If so, how do you feel about being labelled a 'far-right extremist'?

A report that appeared in the Sunderland Echo on 3 December confirmed (as mentioned by a commenter below) that a woman wearing a niqab threw a bag of what appeared to be 'dog excrement' at the protesters, but the police have stated that it 'contained mud'. Her action cannot be described as being within the bounds of legitimate objection to the protest and was unnecessarily provocative. Nonetheless, she was only 'ushered away' and did not, so far as can be deduced from the report, receive a police caution. Although the protest itself is said to have been generally peaceful, it is stated that a bottle was thrown at the police (which fool did that?) and a number of fireworks were let off. It claimed that the demonstrators numbered about 200.

EDL Demonstrators in Shotton Colliery (Saturday 1 December 2012)