Posted on 10/27/2005 6:34:45 PM PDT by A. Pole
The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill: A Milestone on Britain’s Road to Dhimmitude
The House of Lords is clashing with Tony Blair’s Labour government over its proposed Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This is an Orwellian piece of legislation. Its real purpose of preventing any meaningful discussion of Islam. If passed it would enable authorities to charge people with “inciting religious hatred” even if they speak or write the truth about the Kuran, the hadith, the historical practice of jihad, or the long-term aspirations of the Muslim diaspora in the West.
The proposed measure has been denounced by human rights groups and prominent individuals as a new blasphemy law in a dangerous new guise. Stephen Fry, the actor, said the plans were unworkable: “Religion, surely, if it is worth anything, doesn’t need protection against anything I can say.” Rowan Atkinson, one of Britain’s best known comedians, has warned that the prime motivating energy for the Bill did not come from communities seeking protection from bullying,
but from individuals with a more aggressive, fundamentalist agenda, those who have sought, from the very day of the publication in 1989 of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, to immunise religions against criticism and ridicule—or at least to promote legislation that is so sinister and intimidating, it can provide that immunity without even the need to prosecute anyone. In other words, to impose self-censorship.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the intended criminalization of “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” was hailed by Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, as a “long overdue” measure. Sher Khan, chairman of the group’s public affairs committee, criticized opponents of the bill, and particularly Mr. Atkinson, for having created “a media frenzy by claiming that the proposed law will ban criticism of religious beliefs; it certainly will not.”
The bill was rejected by the Lords just before last spring’s general election when the government tried to get it through as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. Prime Minister Tony Blair subsequently included the passage of the Bill into his party’s election manifesto, and that was used by Labour’s candidates as a means of attracting Muslim votes during the campaign. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats, along with many Labour peers, believe the proposed law would undermine freedom of speech. A broad coalition led by Lord Lester, the Lib-Dem peer, has introduced a number of amendments to the bill aimed at protecting freedom of speech. “It would lead to the worst possible result if this defective legislation were pushed through,” he said, “so we need to present amendments which would protect groups like the Muslims, but also safeguard freedom of expression.”
Baroness Cox, a Tory peer, warns that “the proposed law may increase tensions between communities rather than reduce them.” She pointed out that a similar law introduced in Australia has led to the prosecution of two Christian pastors, Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot, who were charged under Victoria’s rather similar “Racial and Religious Vilification Act” with inciting hatred because they analyzed the nature of jihad, aspirations of Muslims in the west, and the connection between the laws of jihad and the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam. Cox also points out that under the proposed bill, people accused of inciting religious hatred could not rely on the defence of claiming they had simply been speaking the truth about a particular religion.
To understand what is going on in London today, we need to go to Teheran in February 1989, where Ayatollah Khomeini issued a remarkable pronouncement:
I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses—which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran—and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities… [W]hoever is killed on this path is a martyr.
Salman Rushdie was a British citizen born to a Muslim family in India but living in England. The mortal sin of this writer of secularist persuasion was his attempt to confront in fictional form what he calls “Actually Existing Islam”—“the political and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Muslim societies”—with the uncertainties governing the circumstances under which the Kuran came into existence. Khomeini died a few months later but the edict stayed because, contrary to widespread belief, it was not a fatwa—valid only while the issuing authority is alive—but a hukm “which is permanent and it will stay in place until it is carried out,” according to the authoritative judgment of Ayatollah Abdallah Javadi-Amoli.
That the leader of the Iranian theocracy openly called for an act of terrorism—the murder of a British citizen on foreign soil—was the first extraordinary aspect of the Rushdie affair. The act was scandalous, and should have prompted not only Great Britain but also every other country that deems itself civilized to sever diplomatic relations with Iran, to demand an unconditional public retraction, an apology, and a compensation for the writer. That did not happen, and when European Community members shied away even from a common expression of disapproval towards the Iranian regime, a jubilant Khomeini gloated that Europe was “humiliated and disgraced.” That did not happen even in the summer of 1991, when the Italian translator of The Satanic Verses was badly wounded during an attempt on his life, and the Japanese translator of the novel, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death near his university office in Tokyo. Khomeini’s verdict remained in force from beyond his grave.
Commenting on Khomeini’s announcement, prominent novelist Anthony Burgess wondered if “our British Muslims will be eager to read that great vindication of free speech, which is John Milton’s Areopagitica.” His hunch was right: “our” “British” Muslims appeared to agree enthusiastically with Khomeini’s verdict, and that was the second remarkable feature of the affair. They did so publically and en masse. “I think we should kill Salman Rushdie’s whole family,” Faruq Mughal screamed as he emerged from a West London mosque. Sayed Abdul Quddus, the Muslim leader in Bradford, declared that Rushdie deserved hanging: “It is Islamic law. He must die.” Pop star Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens) agreed, repeatedly, on TV and elsewhere. An affluent London-based property developer told reporters, “If I see him, I will kill him straight away. Take my name and address. One day I will kill him.” The president of the mosque in the West Midlands city of Dudley opined that “ninety-nine per cent of Muslims would be prepared to kill him.” Parvez Akhtar, a financial advisor from Bradford, told a reporter that “if Salman Rushdie came here, he would be torn to pieces. He is a dead man.”
Open incitement to murder was given wide publicity, with impunity for the culprits: Mohammed Sidiqqi, president of the Muslim Youth Movement of Great Britain, said he would welcome an opportunity to kill the author himself. “His mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks forgiveness to almighty Allah,” said Iqbal Sacranie of the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs, who was subsequently made a Knight of the Realm—he is now Sir Iqbal—and who is such an enthusiastic supporter of Blair’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.
Those British Muslims who were not in favor of killing Rushdie merely feared the consequences for their community of that deed, not its moral or theological soundness. Statements similar to those quoted came from all ends of the Muslim community’s social, educational, and ethnic spectrum. Those who did not approve of any threat against Rushdie as immoral and wicked may have been out there, but they chose to stay quiet.
The third symptomatic aspect of the affair was the widespread sentiment in the British elite class that—lip service to the freedom of speech notwithstanding—Mr. Rushdie really had it coming, or at least that Muslim anger is understandable even if Khomeini’s verdict is not, and that the anger should be appeased. Lord Dacre (previously known as Hugh Trevor-Roper, the historian of World War II) famously declared that he “would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring his manners, should waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them. If that should cause him thereafter to control his pen, society would benefit and literature would not suffer.” There was no outcry of the elites in defense of one of the fundamental principles of democracy, the freedom of speech.
The politicians unsurprisingly wanted to have it both ways. Deputy leader of the Labour Party Roy Hattersley defended “free speech” but went on to call for the paperback edition of the “Verses” not to be published because a real offence had been caused to Muslims: for Rushdie to hold on the paperback would signify his regret for the offence and assuage Muslim anger. In the Midlands city of Leicester the local Member of Parliament and a leading figure in the Asian community in Great Britain led thousands of Muslim demonstrators calling for Rushdie’s death—but then telephoned the author a week later to sympathize with his predicament. The deputy chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality declared that Britain could not afford to have “a large, proud and law-abiding minority withdrawing in a mood of deep sulk,” while the Crown Prosecution Service refused to authorize the bringing by the police of any charges of incitement to murder Rushdie against those calling for his death. British historian David Selbourne notes that the Muslims have made ample use of their realization that western liberal societies were fearful of the rise of Islamic self-confidence and strength, and ever more deeply divided over how to respond to it. The results were grim:
In 1989 and 1990 many Muslims in Britain made Rushdie the scapegoat for their troubles. In 2005, as the Islamic advance accelerates and anti-Americanism grows, Muslims throughout the world, now greatly strengthened by western liberal support, continue to blame everyone but themselves for Islamism’s violences and the angers that they arouse.
Almost 17 years later, Prime Minister Tony Blair is a major source of that “western liberal support” and a leading character witness for Islam in the West. “What happened in America was not the work of Islamic terrorists, it was not the work of Muslim terrorists,” he declared after meeting with a group of Muslim “community leaders” at 10 Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. “It was the work of terrorists, pure and simple” who must not be honored “with any misguided religious justification,” because they “contravened all the tenets of Islam”:
It is . . . explicitly contrary to Islamic law to kill innocent civilians, to murder women and children and non-combatants… Islam is a peace-loving, tolerant, religion. Many of the world’s religions, indeed including Christianity, draw from the same spiritual heritage. We share the same values, and the same respect for the sanctity of human life . . . [W]e know of no specific threat in relation to this country and it is important that we are not alarmist about it. And I mean frankly some of the reports have been alarmist.
Echoing the Prime Minnister, his Home Office Minister John Denham pledged to cut out the “cancer of Islamophobia” infecting Britain, and declared that “the real Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and understanding.” He called on the media to avoid promoting “a distorted or caricatured or prejudiced” view of Muslims or the Islamic faith. Dr. Richard Stone, chairman of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, criticized the Blair government for not addressing “in a deep way” the anti-Muslim prejudice in Britain: “There is now . . . mounting concern that the already fragile foothold gained by Muslim communities in Britain is threatened by ignorance and intolerance.” He added that the only area where there had been major improvement was “within Muslim communities themselves.” The key finding of his commission was that 9-11 had made life more difficult for Muslims. It castigated British public bodies for failing to address “institutional Islamophobia” and called for changes in the law to better protect Muslim communities (i.e., introduce censorship) and “a major effort” (i.e., affirmative action) to bring more Muslims into public life. The Director of Public Prosecutions expressed concern that the war on terror is “alienating whole communities” in Great Britain.
Collectively these and other members of London’s elite class have contributed to the creation of a culture of Muslim victimhood in which “Islamophobia,” defined both as a legal crime and a moral outrage, inhibited serious debate on the causes of terrorism. Since then thousands of people have been murdered in jihadist attacks, in Bali, Moscow, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, Sharm-el-Sheik, Nairobi, and dozens of other places. On July 7, 2005, London’s turn came. The suicide bombers were four young British citizens, Muslim by religion, but born and bred in England: they attended British state schools, traveled on British passports, and spoke with Yorkshire accents. They also hated England and its people with such intensity that they were prepared to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill as many of them as possible. They were coldly premeditated, practicing their attacks on a dry run on June 28, nine days before their bombs killed 52 people and wounded 200. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead suicide bomber, recorded a video in which he declared, “We are at war and I am a solider.”
It has been known for years that trained al-Qaeda terrorists were present in the United Kingdom and operated in classic small cell structures. In December 2002, only a day after the arrest of seven Muslims suspected of terrorism in London and Edinburgh, British government sources acknowledged the existence of terrorist cells in the country and predicted that the most likely threat would take the form of a “explosives left in a public place” and attacks on transport networksBut when asked if the 7/7 bombings were the work of Islamic terrorists, the deputy commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, responded that the culprits “certainly were not Islamic terrorists, because Islam and terrorism simply don’t go together.” He repeated, almost word for word, Tony Blair’s assurances on the subject given four years earlier.
Paddick’s boss, the Met’s Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, is out-Blairing his better known namesake. He takes pride in his force’s “cultural and community resources unit” that enables police to call in Somalian-born officers to a Somalian case, but admits that “we do have some trouble providing Inuits.” Six months before the London bombs he made the unbelievable statement that “there is nothing wrong with being an Islamic fundamentalist.” When a journalist suggested that the family of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film maker who was killed for questioning Islamic attitudes to women, could beg to differ on that one, Sir Ian replied,
“There were lots of fundamentalist Muslims who didn’t shoot him.” So that’s okay? “Just wait,” he says sharply. “Look at Jerry Springer. Christian fundamentalists objected very strongly but they didn’t shoot the producer. And nor do 99.9 percent of Muslims want the sort of extremism that leads to violence. They know the consequences of terrorists claiming to be Muslim, so our job is to help. Bridges will be built.”
It is to be feared that if and when London’s “7/7” happens again, possibly on a far grander scale, the sleepwalking of those who are supposed to protect Britain will become more determined than ever before. With stern illiberalism that belies their self-professed respect for other cultures and belief systems, they will continue to deny respect to the bombers who sacrifice their lives for the sake of their faith by denying them the right to define themselves. Khan and his three associates died for Islam, but Blair, Blair & Co. insist that they could do no such thing.
Blairism is all–pervasive in the academia that informs the policy-makers. “The bombs that killed more than 50 people in the heart of London in July served only to reinforce the realisation across the EU that more effective action is needed to ensure the integration of migrants, and their children, into our diverse societies,” writes Sarah Spencer of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at Oxford University, in an European Union-sponsored publication. We need to move beyond security and the fear of radicalization, she asserts, which “set a narrow and potentially divisive context” (i.e., law and order) for an agenda that “has to embrace broader outcomes,” such as greater access by the Muslim community to jobs, housing, health, education, poverty and civic participation. Such measures should be regulated by “an EU-wide approach to the integration of migrants,” Ms. Spencer concludes.
Historian David Starkey, while addressing The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival in October 2005, warned that “Britain is in danger of sleepwalking into a new era of religious intolerance after the July 7 bombings” and that society needed to reconsider its attitute. He warned against anti-terrorism legislation that includes expressing any sympathy for suicide bombers. The key to present-day threats, Starkey concludes, is tolerance: “In the same way that a multitude of religious sects were allowed to continue without threat of being burnt at the stake after the Restoration, Britain today should tolerate Islam.”
The thought that British Muslims may be loath to integrate and accept being one among a multitude is inadmissible to the elite mindset. Even in the mundane Britain of commerce and banking, Islam has successfully planted the seeds of its acceptance as a legitimately parallel structure with the non-interest-based, sharia-compliant “Islamic mortgages” which every self-respecting High Street home loan provider now feels obliged to offer:
It was an unusual sight—hundreds of businessmen listening attentively while a small group of top-notch Islamic scholars instructed them on the intricacies of Muslim ethics. These were bankers, and what they wanted to know was how they could do better business with Muslims. The Islamic Real Estate Finance conference . . . came after The Bank of England’s request for high street banks to create financial solutions for Muslims . . . Islamic scholars were called in to advise on the Sharia-compliance of the new mortgages. On the whole they were happy, but some expressed concern that the banks may be using money in non-permissible activities, like financing breweries or non-halal meat companies.
This is but one manifestation of the ongoing legitimization of the sharia as a legal and moral code with a legitimate role in the public life of Great Britain. A key tenet of sharia is that non-Muslims cannot try Muslims or testify against them. A judge at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, may not be familiar with the Islamic law but he observed its commandments when he banned Jews and Hindus—and anyone married to one—from serving on the jury in the trial of Abdullah el-Faisal, accused of soliciting the murder of “unbelievers.” The judge reportedly announced, “For obvious reasons, members of the jury of the Jewish or Hindu faith should reveal themselves, even if they are married to Jewish or Hindu women, because they are not fit to arbitrate in this case.” One can only speculate what the reaction would be if equally “obvious reasons” were invoked in an attempt to exclude Muslims from a trial of an alleged Islamophobe.
For years Muslims have been getting halal meals in British schools and hospitals. The Commission for Racial Equality has ruled that businesses must provide prayer rooms for Muslims and pay them for their absences on Islam’s holidays. Public funds are used to build state-of-the-art housing in London’s East End reserved for Muslim “elders” from which white pensioners are excluded. But Sirajul Islam, in charge of social services at the borough of Tower Hamlets, responded that “one size fits all” approach to public services was no longer acceptable in 21st century Britain: “Tower Hamlets is fortunate to have a diverse mix of communities and the council strives to ensure that its services are responsive to the differing and changing needs of its residents.”
The bombings in London were a logical outcome of the Blairite forma mentis, the size of Muslim immigration into the country, and the dynamics of that growing community’s symbiotic interaction with the elite consensus. Even before the Rushdie affair allowed Muslims in Britain to flex their muscles in open opposition to the law of the land, a Declaration issued by the Islamic Foundation in Leicester stated, urbi et orbi, that its goal is to change the existing British society into “an Islamic society based on the Qur’an and the Sunna and make Islam, which is a code for entire life, supreme and dominant, especially in the socio-political spheres.
A generation later mosques and Islamic centers have multiplied all over Britain and provide the backbone to terrorist support network. The Home Office approved visas to Muslim clerics, primarily from Pakistan, sympathetic to the radicals. At least the British cannot complain that they had not have been warned:
[T]he Islamists don’t even bother going through the traditional rhetorical feints. They say what they mean and they mean what they say . . . Blow up the London Underground during a G8 summit and the world’s leaders twitter about how tragic and ironic it is that this should have happened just as they’re taking steps to deal with the issues, as though the terrorists are upset about poverty in Africa and global warming.
The British security services, exemplified by Sir Ian Blair, have followed their political masters into a state of denial regarding the Islamist threat. The courts, for their part, routinely interpret the criminal, asylum, and terrorism laws in the manner damaging to the security of the Realm and favorable to the Islamic underground. That underground thrives in mosques, state-supported educational institutions and community centers. There are hundreds of after-hours Islamic schools all over Britain in which Muslim children start formal indoctrination in their parents’ creed. That message, rooted in rock-hard certainties, very effectively overrides the tepid multiculturalist message of the state curriculum. Maintaining the loyalty of the Muslim diaspora in Britain has been the mullahs’ top priority, and the system has facilitated their task.
As Islam spreads its control over many inner cities in the industrial heartland, the culture of dhimmitude for the remaining whites is developing by default. The British Council, a taxpayer-funded organization that sponsors cross-cultural projects, fired one of its press officers, Harry Cummins, for publishing four articles in London’s Sunday Telegraph critical of Islam. British Muslims took exception to his observation that Muslims had rights to practice their religion in the UK which were not available to Christians in the Islamic world, and this “despite the fact that these Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land.” He also wrote that Muslims had displayed a “bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist threat.” His cardinal sin was to note that “it is the black heart of Islam, not its black face, to which millions object.” Abdul Bari, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed Cummins’ firing but expressed “dismay” that the publishing company had not taken action against the editor of the Sunday Telegraph as well.
The new curriculum on religious education, backed by the Education Secretary Charles Clarke, will “help overcome barriers to how non-Muslims understand the faith” and “help strengthen a multi-faith, multi-cultural society.” Sir Iqbal’s Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is helping with the curriculum. It is only through understanding thus gained “that this country can move forward as a true multi-faith and multicultural society,” according to Mr Clarke: “We must ensure children grow up with a better understanding of their friends and neighbours. The Muslim Council of Britain’s initiative, books for schools, brings us much closer towards that goal.”
Submission or resistance is Britain’s choice. In Tony Blair’s and Charles Clarke’s scheme of things there is no doubt which path should be taken, and that is the real purpose of their cherished Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. Who they are and what they stand for is light years away from another British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who warned over a century ago that “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world” than Islam:
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
If Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is passed, we will be a step closer to the fulfilment of T.S. Eliot’s warning that the West would end, “not with a bang but a whimper.” In 1899, a 26 year old Winston Churchill expressed hope
that if evil days should come upon our own country, and the last army which a collapsing Empire could interpose between London and the invader were dissolving in rout and ruin, that there would be some—even in these modern days—who would not care to accustom themselves to a new order of things and tamely survive the disaster.
Even Churchill’s prescience could not envisage the possibility that “the invader” would have his Quislings and abettors at No. 10, at the Old Bailey, and at London’s County Hall.
Dhimmitude bump!
Once again the British seem eager to demonstrate that they are subjects, not citizens.
BNP is an ugly racist organization which claimed that mass immigrations of Muslims will end in a disaster.
Islam doesn't need a law to protect it from criticism. If you criticize it publicly, you will probably be murdered. Prosecution in a court of law seems a little unnecessary at that point.
If the Brits haven't lost their minds, they will understand that their right to criticize Islam is what is in danger. If they give this up in exchange for a little safety, they are hopeless.
"a declaration issued by the Islamic Foundation in Leicrter stated that its goal is to change the existing British society into an Islamic society based on the Koran..."
It doesn't get any clearer than that. Political correctness must stop and Islam must be removed from Western society.
The Turks weren't above using them as cannon fodder.
A lot of Europe (and Canada) seems to be going this way: censoring free speech because they're afraid of hurting some terrorists', or any other Politically Correct group's feelings. It's only a matter of time before the US follows suit; wasn't there a bill proposed in Pa. that would censor churches(etc.) preaching against homosexuality?
It is not believed the Spanish kept Moslem POWs, so most of these guys would probably have been Christians of some kind with a degree of proficiency in Turkish.
Obviously being a POW in North America was not a good thing in those times and many men escaped, only to be captured by the Indians on the East Coast.
There were enough of these guys that when the London Company and other North American realty development groups set about establishing colonies, they sent along Turkish speakers in the belief this would facilitate their communicating with the local Indians (through their Turkish speaking POWs).
Captain John Smith, formerly a captive of the Turks, spoke fluent Turkish. That's why he was chosen as the leader of the Jamestown colony.
Captain John seems to have had absolutely no problem communicating with the local Indians!
No, but RINO's can help to dismantle it.
Does anyone on this board seriously think that similar legislation will not be introduced, by some PC leftist, in this country? Hell, the Brits are walking in circles, like us, it's damned scary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.