The article below, based on a report by AFP, was published in the Australian, on 27 November, 2010, and then cut and pasted onto the Lancaster Unity "anti-fascist" blog, without any critical editorial comment from them.
No, it is left to a member of the despised and vilified British National Party to point out that at the end of this article its author grossly understates the death toll at the Auschwitz extermination camp. One million is far too low an estimate of the number of Jews who died at Auschwitz, museum plaque notwithstanding. The eminent historian Lord Russell of Liverpool states, in respect of Auschwitz, "Before the end of the war not less than three million men, women and children had met their death there by gassing and other means". By far the bulk of these victims were Jews. Consequently, at least two, and possibly nearer three, million Jews perished at Auschwitz, rather than the one million stated in the article published in the Australian, and re-published on the Lancaster Unity blog.
Perhaps this minimization of the death toll of Jews at Auschwitz is part of an attempt to curry favour with the Muslim community at the expense of the Jewish community.
Certainly, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) provides a salutary spectacle of "dhimmitude" through their sycophantic pandering to the most vocal and extreme elements (such as the Muslims Against Crusades' group, and its outrageous desecration of the Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph) of Islam.
The article now follows.
November 30, 2010
Neo-Nazi Anders Hoegstroem jailed for Auschwitz theft
Posted by Antifascist 0 Comment (s)
A Swedish neo-Nazi leader accused of ordering the theft of the Auschwitz death camp entrance sign will serve 32 months behind bars.
Anders Hoegstroem, who had risked up to 10 years' jail if convicted in Poland, admitted his role before the case reached court, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Krakow said yesterday.
Hoegstroem was arrested in Sweden on a Polish warrant in February on suspicion of ordering the theft of the infamous Arbeit macht frei - Work will set you free - sign from the site of the World War II Nazi camp in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim.
Polish police recovered the 5m metal sign two days after it went missing late last year. It had been chopped into three pieces. Of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, a million were murdered at Auschwitz.
[ENDS]
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Sunday, 28 November 2010
BNP still under investigation by Electoral Commission over its accounts
Press Statement by Electoral Commission
BNP Statement of Accounts
14 Apr 2010
In January 2010 the Electoral Commission, the independent party finance watchdog, began a case review following concerns raised in the independent auditor’s opinion about the adequacy of the 2008 statement of accounts of the British National Party.
The case has now become an investigation. However, it is important to note - particularly during an election period - that no conclusion has been reached and therefore no assumption should be made as to whether a breach of the rules has occurred.
Ends/
For further information please contact
Electoral Commission press office on 020 7271 0704
Out of office hours on 07789 920414
Email: press@electoralcommission.org.uk
Notes to editors
1.The Electoral Commission is an independent body established by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums (PPERA) Act 2000.
2.Section 41 of PPERA requires that “the treasurer of a registered party must ensure that accounting records are kept with respect to the party which are sufficient to show and explain the party’s transactions.”
3.The BNP statement of accounts for the central party and for the party’s accounting unit for 2008 are available on the Commission website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/database-of-registers/statements-of-account
4.Concerns were raised by the independent auditor in relation to the 2008 statement of accounts of the BNP. In January we wrote to the BNP requesting further information and began a case review. That case review has now become an investigation.
5.It is our usual policy to issue a press release at this point. A full copy of our policy on handling allegations and disclosing information relating to them can be found on the Commission website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/enforcement/making-allegations
[ENDS]
The Electoral Commission states on its web site, www.electoralcommission.org.uk, that it aims to conclude ninety per cent of its investigations within a six month period. Since its investigation, (as distinct from its "case review"), of the British National Party, began on 14 April 2010, this means that its investigation of the BNP has already been so protracted that it has missed the Commission's six month target.
On 1 December, next week, the 'beefed-up' enforcement powers granted to the Electoral Commission under the Political Parties and Elections Act, 2009, come into effect. These will empower the Commission to compel individuals to provide material evidence, to attend interviews, and to answer questions, and are similar to the powers enjoyed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration ("the Ombudsman"), for example.
Certainly, Messrs Griffin, Dowson, Hannam, and Jefferson, have questions to answer.
BNP Statement of Accounts
14 Apr 2010
In January 2010 the Electoral Commission, the independent party finance watchdog, began a case review following concerns raised in the independent auditor’s opinion about the adequacy of the 2008 statement of accounts of the British National Party.
The case has now become an investigation. However, it is important to note - particularly during an election period - that no conclusion has been reached and therefore no assumption should be made as to whether a breach of the rules has occurred.
Ends/
For further information please contact
Electoral Commission press office on 020 7271 0704
Out of office hours on 07789 920414
Email: press@electoralcommission.org.uk
Notes to editors
1.The Electoral Commission is an independent body established by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums (PPERA) Act 2000.
2.Section 41 of PPERA requires that “the treasurer of a registered party must ensure that accounting records are kept with respect to the party which are sufficient to show and explain the party’s transactions.”
3.The BNP statement of accounts for the central party and for the party’s accounting unit for 2008 are available on the Commission website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/database-of-registers/statements-of-account
4.Concerns were raised by the independent auditor in relation to the 2008 statement of accounts of the BNP. In January we wrote to the BNP requesting further information and began a case review. That case review has now become an investigation.
5.It is our usual policy to issue a press release at this point. A full copy of our policy on handling allegations and disclosing information relating to them can be found on the Commission website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/enforcement/making-allegations
[ENDS]
The Electoral Commission states on its web site, www.electoralcommission.org.uk, that it aims to conclude ninety per cent of its investigations within a six month period. Since its investigation, (as distinct from its "case review"), of the British National Party, began on 14 April 2010, this means that its investigation of the BNP has already been so protracted that it has missed the Commission's six month target.
On 1 December, next week, the 'beefed-up' enforcement powers granted to the Electoral Commission under the Political Parties and Elections Act, 2009, come into effect. These will empower the Commission to compel individuals to provide material evidence, to attend interviews, and to answer questions, and are similar to the powers enjoyed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration ("the Ombudsman"), for example.
Certainly, Messrs Griffin, Dowson, Hannam, and Jefferson, have questions to answer.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
BNP at the crossroads
Below is a letter from Peter Strudwick, BNP Reform's legal officer, to Mr Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, which was sent to him by post, care of the party's Welshpool PO Box, on 29 October 2010.
In his letter Peter reviews the events of the last fifteen months which have led him to the conclusion that Mr Griffin should relinquish the position of national chairman and party leader. At the same time Peter acknowledges the "...major contribution to British Nationalism..." made by Mr Griffin and implies that if he were to stand down now, rather than be forced out later, his "...reputation can remain substantially intact".
To date, Peter has received no reply to his letter from Mr Griffin.
The letter now follows.
Dear Nick
I write about the prevailing sad condition of the BNP, with its huge debts, loss of political momentum, arbitrary expulsions and suspensions and widespread discontent manifest amongst a fair proportion of the membership.
This depressing and fast-deteriorating situation is in marked contrast to the elation which greeted yours and Andrew Brons's election as MEPs - magnificent and thoroughly well-deserved victories which seemed to mark a point of transition in the party's fortunes and move us one step nearer our cherished ambition of contesting for political power.
As I see it, you deserve a great deal of credit for what you have done in the eleven years of your leadership; but there has been a rather rapid turnabout in our fortunes in the past 15 months or so. Four issues seem to stand out:
Your appearance on Question Time;
The revelations concerning the huge indebtedness, which has not been helped by the totally inexplicable failure of the party to produce accounts which satisfy the Electoral Commission;
The perception, albeit not wholly justified, of poor local and national election results, inducing much pessimism;
The (in my opinion) unwise intervention on your part over the Queen's Garden Party invitation.
All these things, coupled with a catalogue of heavy-handed suspensions and expulsions (many of which breach the basic rules of natural justice insofar as they give no reasons for the action taken) have brought about disappointment and, more than that, disillusionment.
I will dwell a bit on these matters.
Certainly you were treated unfairly at Question Time by Dimbleby and the participants but I felt you didn't sufficiently defend the party's programme. Your reasons for having changed your mind about the systematic murder of Jews came over as laboured. This clearly alienated many potential supporters.
As regards the party's debts, there is little to say other than the patently obvious: namely that there has been very poor management of the BNP's finances, despite the availability in the party of a number of accountants whose expertise you have been unwilling to utilize for some reason. The consequences being £580,000 of indebtedness and yet again a failure to produce accounts to the satisfaction of the Electoral Commission, making the BNP unique in this regard [not quite unique: Sinn Fein and the Christian Party also failed to submit their accounts on time, AE] - hardly something to be proud of.
As a result of the failure to pay the party's creditors, IDENTITY can't be published. I spoke with John Bean the other day. This was to be his last issue as editor. Am I one of the few people who have thanked him for his outstanding efforts? Moreover, members can feel aggrieved because their membership subscriptions are supposed to guarantee receipt of IDENTITY.
I am not in a position to know precisely what is the true cause of the party's financial crisis. I make just two observations. I have never personally believed allegations of improper financial dealings on your part but at the same time you cannot escape responsibility for the self-evident mismanagement of the party's money on a huge scale as Party Chairman, whatever claims you may make that it has been Dowson's fault.
Until quite recently I have never read the 12th constitution. I have now done so. It is, as I told you at the Dagenham meeting, an abomination of a document which I understand cost the party a substantial amount of money - £25,000? What a huge waste of money. It is 92 pages of very complicated, poorly written material, full of typographical errors and poor proof reading. I cannot believe you can have sanctioned such a monstrosity.
What the party needs is a concise, accurate, well-written document of, I suggest, 12-15 pages - no more, which everyone can understand, not the current incomprehensible apology for a constitution.
I have offered myself to produce such a suitable document which I believe would meet the party's requirements.
As regards the local and national election results, my own view is that the parliamentary results were reasonably good and something to build upon. Certainly the local results were disappointing but you are quite right in your assessment that it is easier to win seats than it is to hold them. And certainly local election fortune is always cyclical. There is no reason why we cannot win back our lost seats.
On the issue of the Queen's Garden Party, here I have to express total amazement. Andrew Brons and his daughter were photographed smiling in their finery and created a very favourable impression. Here, likewise was an opportunity for you. You, Jackie and your children would have come over very well. The uncommitted would have had to reflect on the normality of it all. Yet that became impossible because for some inexplicable reason you chose to go public and invited the membership to communicate with you so that you could tell the Queen of their concerns! Why should she want a private occasion to become a political forum? The Palace cannot be blamed for the action it took. I suggest that this is a very widely-held view within the party. I think this episode is a terrible misjudgement on your part which has given us harmful publicity and made us appear ridiculous.
The BNP is at the crossroads. It can go forward if it can surmount its current crises but, respectfully, I do not believe that can happen under your continued leadership. Most party leaders have a finite period of effectiveness. For Thatcher it was eleven years, for Blair nine years; for yourself, as events have turned out, it has also been eleven years.
You have lost your edge. You have made a major contribution to British Nationalism which only a charlatan would gainsay. You still retain your well-earned position as an MEP and you still have your individual contribution to make as a party member, particularly in your writing and speaking skills. Your reputation can remain substantially intact.
There is an overwhelming need for change. The party needs peaceful develpment, internal harmony, a new constitution and a realization that we cannot move to the next stage of our development unless we enter into a period of consolidation.
In conclusion, it goes without saying I wish you well at the court hearing on 8 November where, again, I feel the party should never have been involved, simply on the grounds of crippling costs.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
PETER STRUDWICK
[ENDS]
Peter Strudwick is a retired solicitor and university law lecturer.
In his letter Peter reviews the events of the last fifteen months which have led him to the conclusion that Mr Griffin should relinquish the position of national chairman and party leader. At the same time Peter acknowledges the "...major contribution to British Nationalism..." made by Mr Griffin and implies that if he were to stand down now, rather than be forced out later, his "...reputation can remain substantially intact".
To date, Peter has received no reply to his letter from Mr Griffin.
The letter now follows.
Dear Nick
I write about the prevailing sad condition of the BNP, with its huge debts, loss of political momentum, arbitrary expulsions and suspensions and widespread discontent manifest amongst a fair proportion of the membership.
This depressing and fast-deteriorating situation is in marked contrast to the elation which greeted yours and Andrew Brons's election as MEPs - magnificent and thoroughly well-deserved victories which seemed to mark a point of transition in the party's fortunes and move us one step nearer our cherished ambition of contesting for political power.
As I see it, you deserve a great deal of credit for what you have done in the eleven years of your leadership; but there has been a rather rapid turnabout in our fortunes in the past 15 months or so. Four issues seem to stand out:
Your appearance on Question Time;
The revelations concerning the huge indebtedness, which has not been helped by the totally inexplicable failure of the party to produce accounts which satisfy the Electoral Commission;
The perception, albeit not wholly justified, of poor local and national election results, inducing much pessimism;
The (in my opinion) unwise intervention on your part over the Queen's Garden Party invitation.
All these things, coupled with a catalogue of heavy-handed suspensions and expulsions (many of which breach the basic rules of natural justice insofar as they give no reasons for the action taken) have brought about disappointment and, more than that, disillusionment.
I will dwell a bit on these matters.
Certainly you were treated unfairly at Question Time by Dimbleby and the participants but I felt you didn't sufficiently defend the party's programme. Your reasons for having changed your mind about the systematic murder of Jews came over as laboured. This clearly alienated many potential supporters.
As regards the party's debts, there is little to say other than the patently obvious: namely that there has been very poor management of the BNP's finances, despite the availability in the party of a number of accountants whose expertise you have been unwilling to utilize for some reason. The consequences being £580,000 of indebtedness and yet again a failure to produce accounts to the satisfaction of the Electoral Commission, making the BNP unique in this regard [not quite unique: Sinn Fein and the Christian Party also failed to submit their accounts on time, AE] - hardly something to be proud of.
As a result of the failure to pay the party's creditors, IDENTITY can't be published. I spoke with John Bean the other day. This was to be his last issue as editor. Am I one of the few people who have thanked him for his outstanding efforts? Moreover, members can feel aggrieved because their membership subscriptions are supposed to guarantee receipt of IDENTITY.
I am not in a position to know precisely what is the true cause of the party's financial crisis. I make just two observations. I have never personally believed allegations of improper financial dealings on your part but at the same time you cannot escape responsibility for the self-evident mismanagement of the party's money on a huge scale as Party Chairman, whatever claims you may make that it has been Dowson's fault.
Until quite recently I have never read the 12th constitution. I have now done so. It is, as I told you at the Dagenham meeting, an abomination of a document which I understand cost the party a substantial amount of money - £25,000? What a huge waste of money. It is 92 pages of very complicated, poorly written material, full of typographical errors and poor proof reading. I cannot believe you can have sanctioned such a monstrosity.
What the party needs is a concise, accurate, well-written document of, I suggest, 12-15 pages - no more, which everyone can understand, not the current incomprehensible apology for a constitution.
I have offered myself to produce such a suitable document which I believe would meet the party's requirements.
As regards the local and national election results, my own view is that the parliamentary results were reasonably good and something to build upon. Certainly the local results were disappointing but you are quite right in your assessment that it is easier to win seats than it is to hold them. And certainly local election fortune is always cyclical. There is no reason why we cannot win back our lost seats.
On the issue of the Queen's Garden Party, here I have to express total amazement. Andrew Brons and his daughter were photographed smiling in their finery and created a very favourable impression. Here, likewise was an opportunity for you. You, Jackie and your children would have come over very well. The uncommitted would have had to reflect on the normality of it all. Yet that became impossible because for some inexplicable reason you chose to go public and invited the membership to communicate with you so that you could tell the Queen of their concerns! Why should she want a private occasion to become a political forum? The Palace cannot be blamed for the action it took. I suggest that this is a very widely-held view within the party. I think this episode is a terrible misjudgement on your part which has given us harmful publicity and made us appear ridiculous.
The BNP is at the crossroads. It can go forward if it can surmount its current crises but, respectfully, I do not believe that can happen under your continued leadership. Most party leaders have a finite period of effectiveness. For Thatcher it was eleven years, for Blair nine years; for yourself, as events have turned out, it has also been eleven years.
You have lost your edge. You have made a major contribution to British Nationalism which only a charlatan would gainsay. You still retain your well-earned position as an MEP and you still have your individual contribution to make as a party member, particularly in your writing and speaking skills. Your reputation can remain substantially intact.
There is an overwhelming need for change. The party needs peaceful develpment, internal harmony, a new constitution and a realization that we cannot move to the next stage of our development unless we enter into a period of consolidation.
In conclusion, it goes without saying I wish you well at the court hearing on 8 November where, again, I feel the party should never have been involved, simply on the grounds of crippling costs.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
PETER STRUDWICK
[ENDS]
Peter Strudwick is a retired solicitor and university law lecturer.
Sunday, 21 November 2010
The discreet charm of Nick Griffin
The statement below is, according to Eddy Butler, who, let us remember, is in a position to know whereof he writes, a press statement which was drafted by Mr Griffin last year, and, though never released, was used to exert influence on Richard Barnbrook to acquiesce in Mr Griffin's poaching of the Barking parliamentary constituency for himself, as the seat in the country most likely to elect a British National Party MP.
The statement pulls no punches about Richard's perceived shortcomings as an elected representative, and politician. One has to ask the question, though: exactly when did Mr Griffin first become aware of this litany of failings in his once blue-eyed boy, Mr Richard Barnbrook? It seems to have been around the time that Mr Griffin decided that the electorate of Barking were likely to return a BNP MP to parliament. A prize like that was just too good to go to anyone but the party leader, Mr Griffin no doubt reasoned.
Once that idea had become fixed in Mr Griffin's mind, no doubt all of Richard's many alleged failings began to be borne in on him, and to assume a progressively increasing salience in proportion to the strength of Richard's natural reluctance to be squeezed out of what he, understandably, regarded as the natural reward of his labours in Barking and Dagenham, as the public face of the BNP in the borough.
This unsavoury self-seeking on the part of Mr Griffin raises several questions. Firstly, if Richard Barnbrook were such a "basket case" as Mr Griffin's draft press statement alleges, why was he chosen as the BNP's candidate for Mayor of London, and as number one on the party list for the London Assembly election in 2008? After all, by then he had already served for two years as leader of the BNP group on the Barking and Dagenham borough council, which one would have thought would have been ample time in which to evaluate both the strengths and weaknesses of his performance of his public duties.
No, it was only when Richard appeared to be getting between Mr Griffin and something he wanted for himself, namely the glory and prestige, not to mention the second salary, associated with becoming the BNP's first MP, that Mr Griffin turned against him. Up to that point Mr Griffin could not have cared less that the people of Barking and Dagenham, and of Greater London, were being represented by a man who was not up to the job, if indeed that was the case.
Indeed, the 'settlement' which was reached between Mr Griffin and Mr Barnbrook, shortly before the BNP's annual conference, in November 2009, entailed that whereas Mr Barnbrook agreed to allow Mr Griffin a clear run as the BNP's candidate in Barking at the general election, Mr Griffin, in a cynical quid pro quo, agreed that Mr Barnbrook should be the leader of the Barking and Dagenham council, in the event of the party winning control of it in the London borough council elections of 2010. If Mr Barnbrook were unsuitable to represent the BNP as a member of the London Assembly, as a Barking and Dagenham councillor, or as an MP, as Mr Griffin's draft press statement claims, then how could he be fit to serve as the leader of a London Borough council?
Doesn't this amply confirm, as if any further confirmation were needed, that Mr Griffin always puts his own personal interests first, before those of the party, not to mention the public?
Having observed both Mr Griffin, and Mr Barnbrook, deliver speeches, and engage in debate, I judge that Mr Griffin is somewhat the more accomplished performer. However, Mr Griffin's slight superiority is heavily outweighed by his holocaust-denying baggage, with which Richard is not encumbered. Richard was also well known, and well liked by many of the electors of Barking. Moreover, unlike Mr Griffin, who dwelt hundreds of miles away in North Wales, Richard lived in the constituency of Barking. I am not alone in believing that he would have stood a better chance of being elected than Mr Griffin, and would, almost certainly, have polled an appreciably higher share of the vote at the general election.
A political party can only exist, let alone succeed, through the self-sacrifice and altruism of a large number of individuals coming together to work in a spirit of co-operation, towards goals which transcend the personal, and yet through the sacrifice of the purely personal, fulfil the person.
Mr Griffin appears to understand nothing of this. His naked pursuit of his own material gain, at the expense of both party and principle, has alienated most of the BNP's best activists and, crucially, has destroyed its morale. It is unlikely to appeal to the electorate - who are not fools.
The best, perhaps the only, way in which he can now redeem himself, in the eyes of both his contemporaries, and of history, is quietly to stand down as party leader. He has done the party some service, and we know it. Let him do perhaps the greatest service now, and stand down.
PRESS STATEMENT
Release Immediate
Withdrawal of BNP Whip From London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook
It is with regret that the British National Party announces the withdrawal of the party whip from Richard Barnbrook, up until now a BNP councillor in Barking and the party's sole Member on the Greater London Assembly.
We are aware that sections of the media will use this as a stick to beat the BNP, and have worked hard to persuade Mr Barnbrook to make the changes to his lifestyle and attitudes which could have avoided this outcome. In the end, however, the party’s short term political convenience has to be put second behind the interests of our voters and the long term need to maintain our reputation for honesty and competence.
We are therefore unable any longer to allow our voters and our members to be abused and let down by a man who, after so much early promise, has let everyone down so badly.
In itself, Richard`s refusal to seek treatment for his alcohol dependency would be his personal problem and tragedy, but this illness is now having a catastrophic impact on Barnbrook the elected politician. The main, but not the only, problems that result are
* His increasingly erratic and poor attendance record at the GLA
* His repeated and personally disloyal attempts to bully and blame staff members and BNP colleagues for his own failings
* His failure to perform his constituency duties, cancelling meetings without warning or valid excuse. The final straw in this regard was his recent decision to go on an Internet blind date rather than take up a request to attend the funeral of a young victim of the London knife crime epidemic on which he was so active when first elected
* His attending meetings and disciplinary hearings, and giving interviews while drunk
* His ignoring repeated warnings and pleas from colleagues not to drink and drive. We make this a matter of public record here in the hope that the resulting possibility of greater police scrutiny will compel him to revert to travelling by public transport and thereby prevent a serious accident that is at present just a matter of time
* His breaking of his personal pledge to give 10 % of his gross salary to the party, giving instead irregular smaller amounts and repeatedly refusing to provide copies of his council pay slip so as to allow a proper assessment of the resulting shortfall
* His repeated approaches to BNP members with requests for donations and 'investments' into private business proposals and unauthorised personal political projects
* His repeated attempts to blackmail the party leadership by threatening to 'go Independent' in the GLA a move which he has actively discussed with senior officials at the GLA and to split the BNP vote in Barking by standing there in the General Election as an Independent under the slogan 'Barnbrook for Barking'
* His underhand efforts to secure BNP staff time and donors' money for his proposed Independent parliamentary campaign by claiming that this is authorised by the party leadership.
* His insistence on acting as an unofficial spokesperson on television and radio. His two most recent performances after his disciplinary hearing and also following Question Time in themselves make it clear that Richard, for all his qualities, would be wholly unsuitable to represent the Party in the highest level of government in Britain and the most demanding debating chamber in the world.
A number of meetings have been held between Mr Barnbrook and members of the BNP leadership in an effort to resolve these and other problems, but it has been impossible to reach a satisfactory outcome. As a result, Richard Barnbrook's status as a BNP councillor and London Assembly Member is revoked with immediate effect. This decision is reversible if he responds to this sacking by seeking and accepting professional help to deal with his alcohol problem, which is clearly the root of all the failings outlined. But failing that he will not be standing as a BNP candidate in any elections for the foreseeable future.
Our council group in Barking and Dagenham will be reduced by one, but will continue to be led by Cllr. Robert Bailey. The two BNP members who are at present working for Mr Barnbrook in the GLA have been informed that it is entirely their own decision as to whether to continue in post should he wish to retain them. As far as we are concerned it is now no different to any civil service job and we wish them well.
We will be announcing our prospective candidate for the Barking constituency following a selection procedure in which Mr Barnbrook will not be considered. We will be going all out to unseat Margaret Hodge and to replace her with a loyal, competent British National Party MP who will serve the electors of Barking with the dedication they deserve.
ENDS
The statement pulls no punches about Richard's perceived shortcomings as an elected representative, and politician. One has to ask the question, though: exactly when did Mr Griffin first become aware of this litany of failings in his once blue-eyed boy, Mr Richard Barnbrook? It seems to have been around the time that Mr Griffin decided that the electorate of Barking were likely to return a BNP MP to parliament. A prize like that was just too good to go to anyone but the party leader, Mr Griffin no doubt reasoned.
Once that idea had become fixed in Mr Griffin's mind, no doubt all of Richard's many alleged failings began to be borne in on him, and to assume a progressively increasing salience in proportion to the strength of Richard's natural reluctance to be squeezed out of what he, understandably, regarded as the natural reward of his labours in Barking and Dagenham, as the public face of the BNP in the borough.
This unsavoury self-seeking on the part of Mr Griffin raises several questions. Firstly, if Richard Barnbrook were such a "basket case" as Mr Griffin's draft press statement alleges, why was he chosen as the BNP's candidate for Mayor of London, and as number one on the party list for the London Assembly election in 2008? After all, by then he had already served for two years as leader of the BNP group on the Barking and Dagenham borough council, which one would have thought would have been ample time in which to evaluate both the strengths and weaknesses of his performance of his public duties.
No, it was only when Richard appeared to be getting between Mr Griffin and something he wanted for himself, namely the glory and prestige, not to mention the second salary, associated with becoming the BNP's first MP, that Mr Griffin turned against him. Up to that point Mr Griffin could not have cared less that the people of Barking and Dagenham, and of Greater London, were being represented by a man who was not up to the job, if indeed that was the case.
Indeed, the 'settlement' which was reached between Mr Griffin and Mr Barnbrook, shortly before the BNP's annual conference, in November 2009, entailed that whereas Mr Barnbrook agreed to allow Mr Griffin a clear run as the BNP's candidate in Barking at the general election, Mr Griffin, in a cynical quid pro quo, agreed that Mr Barnbrook should be the leader of the Barking and Dagenham council, in the event of the party winning control of it in the London borough council elections of 2010. If Mr Barnbrook were unsuitable to represent the BNP as a member of the London Assembly, as a Barking and Dagenham councillor, or as an MP, as Mr Griffin's draft press statement claims, then how could he be fit to serve as the leader of a London Borough council?
Doesn't this amply confirm, as if any further confirmation were needed, that Mr Griffin always puts his own personal interests first, before those of the party, not to mention the public?
Having observed both Mr Griffin, and Mr Barnbrook, deliver speeches, and engage in debate, I judge that Mr Griffin is somewhat the more accomplished performer. However, Mr Griffin's slight superiority is heavily outweighed by his holocaust-denying baggage, with which Richard is not encumbered. Richard was also well known, and well liked by many of the electors of Barking. Moreover, unlike Mr Griffin, who dwelt hundreds of miles away in North Wales, Richard lived in the constituency of Barking. I am not alone in believing that he would have stood a better chance of being elected than Mr Griffin, and would, almost certainly, have polled an appreciably higher share of the vote at the general election.
A political party can only exist, let alone succeed, through the self-sacrifice and altruism of a large number of individuals coming together to work in a spirit of co-operation, towards goals which transcend the personal, and yet through the sacrifice of the purely personal, fulfil the person.
Mr Griffin appears to understand nothing of this. His naked pursuit of his own material gain, at the expense of both party and principle, has alienated most of the BNP's best activists and, crucially, has destroyed its morale. It is unlikely to appeal to the electorate - who are not fools.
The best, perhaps the only, way in which he can now redeem himself, in the eyes of both his contemporaries, and of history, is quietly to stand down as party leader. He has done the party some service, and we know it. Let him do perhaps the greatest service now, and stand down.
PRESS STATEMENT
Release Immediate
Withdrawal of BNP Whip From London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook
It is with regret that the British National Party announces the withdrawal of the party whip from Richard Barnbrook, up until now a BNP councillor in Barking and the party's sole Member on the Greater London Assembly.
We are aware that sections of the media will use this as a stick to beat the BNP, and have worked hard to persuade Mr Barnbrook to make the changes to his lifestyle and attitudes which could have avoided this outcome. In the end, however, the party’s short term political convenience has to be put second behind the interests of our voters and the long term need to maintain our reputation for honesty and competence.
We are therefore unable any longer to allow our voters and our members to be abused and let down by a man who, after so much early promise, has let everyone down so badly.
In itself, Richard`s refusal to seek treatment for his alcohol dependency would be his personal problem and tragedy, but this illness is now having a catastrophic impact on Barnbrook the elected politician. The main, but not the only, problems that result are
* His increasingly erratic and poor attendance record at the GLA
* His repeated and personally disloyal attempts to bully and blame staff members and BNP colleagues for his own failings
* His failure to perform his constituency duties, cancelling meetings without warning or valid excuse. The final straw in this regard was his recent decision to go on an Internet blind date rather than take up a request to attend the funeral of a young victim of the London knife crime epidemic on which he was so active when first elected
* His attending meetings and disciplinary hearings, and giving interviews while drunk
* His ignoring repeated warnings and pleas from colleagues not to drink and drive. We make this a matter of public record here in the hope that the resulting possibility of greater police scrutiny will compel him to revert to travelling by public transport and thereby prevent a serious accident that is at present just a matter of time
* His breaking of his personal pledge to give 10 % of his gross salary to the party, giving instead irregular smaller amounts and repeatedly refusing to provide copies of his council pay slip so as to allow a proper assessment of the resulting shortfall
* His repeated approaches to BNP members with requests for donations and 'investments' into private business proposals and unauthorised personal political projects
* His repeated attempts to blackmail the party leadership by threatening to 'go Independent' in the GLA a move which he has actively discussed with senior officials at the GLA and to split the BNP vote in Barking by standing there in the General Election as an Independent under the slogan 'Barnbrook for Barking'
* His underhand efforts to secure BNP staff time and donors' money for his proposed Independent parliamentary campaign by claiming that this is authorised by the party leadership.
* His insistence on acting as an unofficial spokesperson on television and radio. His two most recent performances after his disciplinary hearing and also following Question Time in themselves make it clear that Richard, for all his qualities, would be wholly unsuitable to represent the Party in the highest level of government in Britain and the most demanding debating chamber in the world.
A number of meetings have been held between Mr Barnbrook and members of the BNP leadership in an effort to resolve these and other problems, but it has been impossible to reach a satisfactory outcome. As a result, Richard Barnbrook's status as a BNP councillor and London Assembly Member is revoked with immediate effect. This decision is reversible if he responds to this sacking by seeking and accepting professional help to deal with his alcohol problem, which is clearly the root of all the failings outlined. But failing that he will not be standing as a BNP candidate in any elections for the foreseeable future.
Our council group in Barking and Dagenham will be reduced by one, but will continue to be led by Cllr. Robert Bailey. The two BNP members who are at present working for Mr Barnbrook in the GLA have been informed that it is entirely their own decision as to whether to continue in post should he wish to retain them. As far as we are concerned it is now no different to any civil service job and we wish them well.
We will be announcing our prospective candidate for the Barking constituency following a selection procedure in which Mr Barnbrook will not be considered. We will be going all out to unseat Margaret Hodge and to replace her with a loyal, competent British National Party MP who will serve the electors of Barking with the dedication they deserve.
ENDS
Saturday, 20 November 2010
The gathering storm
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
Winston S Churchill
Winston S Churchill
Friday, 19 November 2010
"Anti-racism" is the REAL racism
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100064191/sorry-to-break-the-bad-news-but-anti-racism-is-actually-racist/
Yesterday, after I wrote that “the EU, multiculturalism, the Equalities Act, anti-racism, hate crimes, bastardised human rights, Marx, Marxist feminism, Marcuse and Gramsci” all belong in history’s dustbin, lots of people screamed: “If you’re anti-anti-racism that means you’re pro-racism!”
So I thought I’d help your deprogramming with a little explanation.
“Anti-racism” is not the same as being opposed to racism; rather it is the name sometimes given to a particular authoritarian view of what racism is, and how it can be combated.
The conventional definition of racism is the belief that “race” (however one defines that) is a primary or significant cause of differences between men; that some of these races are superior to others; and that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds of race, or to behave unpleasantly to someone because of their race. The term dates to the 1930s, although “racialist” and “racialism” go back to the Edwardian period.
“Anti-racism” means something altogether different, and is best explained by the Civitas book Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, an account of the Salem-like events that gripped Britain in the 1990s. The authors cite the example of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), which in 1991 set out the implementation of its new Diploma in Social Work.
The first tenet was “the self-evident truth” that “racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures of British society”.
The training manual then stated “steps need to be taken to promote permeation of all aspects of the curriculum by an anti-racist analysis”. All “racist materials” had to be withdrawn from the syllabus and CCETSW would decide what was racist.
In the rules there would be no freedom of speech for opinions that can be constructed as “racist” or favourable to “racism”, and “anti-racist practice requires the adoption of explicit values”. The first value is that individual problems have roots in “political structures” and “not in individual or cultural pathology”. (In other words, if different groups have different outcomes in terms of education or crime levels, it is all the fault of British racism, not of individuals).
A second value is that racial oppression and discrimination are everywhere to be found in British society, even when invisible. In other words, impossible to disprove!
This is “anti-racism”, and it is heavily influenced by a Marxist interpretation of race. Oliver Cox’s 1948 work Class, Caste and Race presents the idea that race originates in “a practical exploitative relationship” used to justify the exploitation of one group by another as part of capitalism.
Racism is created to justify imperialism, exploitation, and scapegoating when things go wrong, and to divide the population to prevent class consciousness from forming.
Racism, therefore, is a product of western, European society, which is why those schooled in British academia are so bad at seeing racism when it is committed by non-whites, because only whites can really be racist.
This, itself, is a racist idea, because it views only whites as being fully sentient actors capable of committing right and wrong, when of course racism, like all human feelings and failings, is universal.
So if you consider yourself an “anti-racist”, you are, in fact, a racist.
Ed West
Yesterday, after I wrote that “the EU, multiculturalism, the Equalities Act, anti-racism, hate crimes, bastardised human rights, Marx, Marxist feminism, Marcuse and Gramsci” all belong in history’s dustbin, lots of people screamed: “If you’re anti-anti-racism that means you’re pro-racism!”
So I thought I’d help your deprogramming with a little explanation.
“Anti-racism” is not the same as being opposed to racism; rather it is the name sometimes given to a particular authoritarian view of what racism is, and how it can be combated.
The conventional definition of racism is the belief that “race” (however one defines that) is a primary or significant cause of differences between men; that some of these races are superior to others; and that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds of race, or to behave unpleasantly to someone because of their race. The term dates to the 1930s, although “racialist” and “racialism” go back to the Edwardian period.
“Anti-racism” means something altogether different, and is best explained by the Civitas book Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, an account of the Salem-like events that gripped Britain in the 1990s. The authors cite the example of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), which in 1991 set out the implementation of its new Diploma in Social Work.
The first tenet was “the self-evident truth” that “racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures of British society”.
The training manual then stated “steps need to be taken to promote permeation of all aspects of the curriculum by an anti-racist analysis”. All “racist materials” had to be withdrawn from the syllabus and CCETSW would decide what was racist.
In the rules there would be no freedom of speech for opinions that can be constructed as “racist” or favourable to “racism”, and “anti-racist practice requires the adoption of explicit values”. The first value is that individual problems have roots in “political structures” and “not in individual or cultural pathology”. (In other words, if different groups have different outcomes in terms of education or crime levels, it is all the fault of British racism, not of individuals).
A second value is that racial oppression and discrimination are everywhere to be found in British society, even when invisible. In other words, impossible to disprove!
This is “anti-racism”, and it is heavily influenced by a Marxist interpretation of race. Oliver Cox’s 1948 work Class, Caste and Race presents the idea that race originates in “a practical exploitative relationship” used to justify the exploitation of one group by another as part of capitalism.
Racism is created to justify imperialism, exploitation, and scapegoating when things go wrong, and to divide the population to prevent class consciousness from forming.
Racism, therefore, is a product of western, European society, which is why those schooled in British academia are so bad at seeing racism when it is committed by non-whites, because only whites can really be racist.
This, itself, is a racist idea, because it views only whites as being fully sentient actors capable of committing right and wrong, when of course racism, like all human feelings and failings, is universal.
So if you consider yourself an “anti-racist”, you are, in fact, a racist.
Ed West
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Conservative Home pandering to Islam
The article below, by 'Melanchthon', was recently published on Conservative Home, a probably quasi-autonomous web site which supports the Conservative Party.
The author, who oddly claims to be a Christian, argues, on the very flimsy grounds of having watched a television programme featuring the noted atheist Richard Dawkins, that "The majority religion in our society is, as it probably always has been, and probably has been in every significant human society, animism."
This is nonsense on stilts. Simply because most people are not regular attenders at church, it does not follow that they are not Christians. In fact, surveys consistently show that most people still regard themselves as Christians, despite only rarely attending church. That is because the institutions of our society have historically been shaped by Christianity even where they now appear to be secular. Society is still culturally Christian, and most non-churchgoers still feel Christian, and rightly regard themselves as such.
Melanchthon seems to believe, and to wish his readers to believe, without adducing any evidence in its support, the proposition that Sunni Islam is a benign, tolerant faith. Has he not heard of the massacre of Christians, only a few days ago in Iraq, of the threatened massacre of Christians in Sunni Muslim Egypt, and of the massacre of Christians by Muslims in Sunni Muslim Pakistan?
Has he not heard, or does he wish conveniently to forget, about the genocidal holocaust suffered by the Christian Armenian people at the hands of the Sunni Muslim Turks in 1894-96, and again in 1915-18?
Or does Melanchthon hope that his readers will be unaware of these facts? Does he hope we will be taken in by his proselytizing, by his advocacy of the creeping Shariatization of society and of "dhimmitude" ( ie, second class citizen status) for those whose self-respect, reason, and patriotism lead them rightly to despise and reject Islam as a culturally alien, repressive, and profoundly inhumane religion? Islam treats, as an immutable article of faith, women as inferior, before Allah and 'his' law, to men. It prescribes, again as an immutable article of faith, barbaric punishments for infractions of Sharia law, such as adultery, theft, homosexual acts, apostasy, and blasphemy.
Furthermore, a society cannot have a little bit of Islam, and leave it at that. The more Muslims in a society, the stronger becomes their religion, and the more strident, and aggressive, become the demands on its behalf. Melanchthon's article itself is an indication that Islam is flexing its muscles, and testing its strength. Combined with numbers (more than four million now and rising) and the confidence that a growing population vis-a-vis the shrinking population of the Christian majority confers, is the money power of the oil-rich Arab states, and the influence they acquire with it, in favour of their religion and its adherents, over our venal Establishment politicians. Regrettably, the latter are all too ready to retrace the shameful path of appeasement trodden by their party forebears in the 1930s.
Then, just as now, the few lone voices who sounded the alarm were derided, and insulted with unpleasant name-calling. Yet they and their warnings were ultimately fully vindicated, fortunately in time to save our people from subjugation to a foreign power and an alien creed. The danger now is more insidious and, for that very reason, far more deadly. I only pray to God, (not Allah,) that our people, the indigenous British, awake to their danger in time to save ourselves from it.
Odd, that Melanchthon refers to the self-hatred of the Establishment and yet offers no explanation for it. Perhaps since he is, so he claims, a Christian and yet argues (however fallaciously) for the establishment of the archetypal supremacist religion and historically the deadly foe of Christianity, as our new state religion, he is very familiar with that self-hatred and perhaps also with masochistic tendencies.
November 13, 2010
Islam should become our state religion, by 'Melanchthon'
The Guardian became outraged when Iain Duncan Smith suggested that it was a "sin" that society had negligently abandonned 4.5 million people to live permanently on out-of work benefits instead of find ways to get them re-integrated into working life. His "mask" was said to have slipped, though he had "almost succeeded" in pretending there was a proper basis for his policies, more acceptable to our "secular society".
The absurdity of suggesting that Iain Duncan Smith's Christian motivations were any kind of secret and of criticising the use of moral categories to justify his policy approaches - only lefties are allowed to have morals, after all; to be Right Wing is, by definition, to be evil, seeking to impose final solutions on the poor, force them to eat rotting horse-flesh, and cleansing them from beyond the sight of nice middle class folk; any right-winger employing a moral term such as "wrong" or "sin" must have some sinister ulterior motivation - has been covered already by the Editor and by Cranmer.
What I want to add, though, is a challenge to this idea, underlying the Guardian's criticisms, that our society is "secular", by which the Guardian clearly means some combination of atheist materialist and agnostic. The reality is that no free society has even been secular, though a number of state structures have been. Our Establishment cannot, any longer, find inspiration in Christianity, so it must look elsewhere. I shall argue that the best alternative is Islam.
The majority religion in our society is, as it probably always has been, and probably has been in every significant human society, animism. As explored in a recent television show by Richard Dawkins, most people believe in some hotchpotch combination of astrology, chakras, healing crystals, reincarnation (think of past lives hypnosis), faith healers, ghosts and spirits. And that's before we start re-interpreting beliefs in aliens or the Illuminati in religious categories. Animism is the religion of The Folk, not atheism.
Leftist atheists (there are plenty of right-wing atheists, also, but they suffer from this particular error somewhat less) have a touching belief that because, as they see it, reason and evidence favour atheist materialism, society is destined eventually to become atheist materialist. Now obviously I dispute vigorously that reason or evidence favour atheist materialism - reason strongly favours philosophical monotheism and the belief in just desert for action (Islam is probably the religion most purely favoured by reason alone); whilst evidence runs contrary to reason in favouring Trinitarianism, and love and mercy as opposed to just desert (this clash between reason and evidence having been acknowledged and explored since the letters of St Paul). But that is not what I want to explore here. I want to challenge the notion that society could conceivably come to believe in atheist materialism even if it were recommended by reason and evidence. Recognising that that simply isn't an option has profound consequences for how a society's politics and constitution should be organised.
It requires a great deal of emotional and intellectual robustness to be a materialist atheist, because atheist materialism responds to the deepest questions of the human heart - "what's it all about?"; "what is truly meaningful and worthy?"; "there must be something more - what is it?"; "we cannot simply end, so what happens after we die?"; and others - it responds to these deep questions by the intellectual equivalent of sticking its fingers in its ears and crying "La, la, la, la! I'm not listening!", namely to intone "These are the wrong questions." Since that is so transparently unsatisfying a response, only very confident people can defy logic by proclaiming themselves satisfied by it. That is why the Dawkins, Atkins, and Hitchens of this world are so strident - they must yell loudly to drown out the discontented voices within.
Atheist materialism has no prospect of replacing orthodox religions (at least in anything remotely like its current forms). Its only contribution to the discussion can be that of the vandal - to destroy what it despises or does not understand leaving nothing of value in its place. The illusion of cleverness generated by atheist materialism has merely broken the confidence of the Establishment in its ability to sell orthodox religion to The Folk. Atheist materialism itself is obviously unsellable. So, without the credible and respectable critique of animism that orthodox religion provides, and only the fundamentally empty and implausible criticisms of animism that atheist materialism offers, The Folk feel no constraints upon the overt expression of what was always, in truth, their underlying superstition.
It is unclear how many in the Establishment were ever really convicted of the truths of orthodox religion, even in its pomp, but they certainly understood and respected its value as a guide and moral focus for policy-making, a discipline upon The Folk, and a key social binding force. The Somme and Passchendaele broke the British Establishment's confidence in itself and in its moral project, but Nihilism isn't any kind of long-term project. Self-pity, self-hatred and self-indulgence are understandable in the light of such terrible events, but at some point we must get over it.
I make no apologies about being a Christian, but I am pragmatic enough to recognise that the British Establishment finds it impossible, any longer, to accept any Christian inspiration for its projects. On the contrary, precisely because it retains certain of the forms of Christianity, the Establishment's self-hatred often takes the form of hating Christians. Individual Christians are oppressed, in our country, precisely because the Establishment still formally takes Christian inspiration but doesn't want it.
It's time to move on. We need to abandon the last vestiges of Christian role in our constitution, and regard Christians as the minority we are, entitled to proper protection in a liberal society of the sort we automatically extend to Muslims and Hindus. But we cannot hope to abandon religious inspiration in our constitution. All that does is create a disconnect between an irreligious polity and our ineliminably religious Folk, and will make our Establishment despised rather than perceived as the rulers and leaders it should be. So we must have something. As I have said above, Christians accept the dictats of evidence over intuitive reason, but Islam is the most straightforwardly intuitive religion of all. Its core doctrines make perfect sense: there is one God over all the earth; He is our creator; He commands obedience from us; He will judge us at the end of our lives sending the virtuous to paradise and the wicked to hell. How could it be any more obvious? Islam is also clearly tempting to our Establishment - they admire its disciplines, certainty, self-confidence and clear hierarchies of authority. If Muslim politicians express matters in moral categories or talk about their prayers, they are not condemned in the way that Christian politicians are. If our Establishment adopted Islam as its religion of inspiration, and we chose Islamic religious leaders to listen to as our society's moral guides, The Folk could be diverted from their superstitions and decadence into more morally purposeful and energetic projects. Our lethargic, morbid Establishment could be quickened into life by clear moral goals provided by those they could respect and listen to. Sunni Islam has also (and crucially), historically been the second most successful structure for promoting tolerant multi-cultural societies (behind Protestantism and ahead of Catholicism).
Our society is not the atheist materialist place that Guardian writers fondly imagine it, and it cannot and will not ever be so. Atheist materialism is simply not well-designed to provide a moral inspiration to societies, for the simple reason that it offers no answers to the big questions. Christianity cannot serve that role any longer in Britain, and the notion that it does has become a threat to individual devout Christians - the Establishment's self-hatred becomes manifest in oppression of Christians. The next best alternative is Islam. That would be the best way to go from here.
The author, who oddly claims to be a Christian, argues, on the very flimsy grounds of having watched a television programme featuring the noted atheist Richard Dawkins, that "The majority religion in our society is, as it probably always has been, and probably has been in every significant human society, animism."
This is nonsense on stilts. Simply because most people are not regular attenders at church, it does not follow that they are not Christians. In fact, surveys consistently show that most people still regard themselves as Christians, despite only rarely attending church. That is because the institutions of our society have historically been shaped by Christianity even where they now appear to be secular. Society is still culturally Christian, and most non-churchgoers still feel Christian, and rightly regard themselves as such.
Melanchthon seems to believe, and to wish his readers to believe, without adducing any evidence in its support, the proposition that Sunni Islam is a benign, tolerant faith. Has he not heard of the massacre of Christians, only a few days ago in Iraq, of the threatened massacre of Christians in Sunni Muslim Egypt, and of the massacre of Christians by Muslims in Sunni Muslim Pakistan?
Has he not heard, or does he wish conveniently to forget, about the genocidal holocaust suffered by the Christian Armenian people at the hands of the Sunni Muslim Turks in 1894-96, and again in 1915-18?
Or does Melanchthon hope that his readers will be unaware of these facts? Does he hope we will be taken in by his proselytizing, by his advocacy of the creeping Shariatization of society and of "dhimmitude" ( ie, second class citizen status) for those whose self-respect, reason, and patriotism lead them rightly to despise and reject Islam as a culturally alien, repressive, and profoundly inhumane religion? Islam treats, as an immutable article of faith, women as inferior, before Allah and 'his' law, to men. It prescribes, again as an immutable article of faith, barbaric punishments for infractions of Sharia law, such as adultery, theft, homosexual acts, apostasy, and blasphemy.
Furthermore, a society cannot have a little bit of Islam, and leave it at that. The more Muslims in a society, the stronger becomes their religion, and the more strident, and aggressive, become the demands on its behalf. Melanchthon's article itself is an indication that Islam is flexing its muscles, and testing its strength. Combined with numbers (more than four million now and rising) and the confidence that a growing population vis-a-vis the shrinking population of the Christian majority confers, is the money power of the oil-rich Arab states, and the influence they acquire with it, in favour of their religion and its adherents, over our venal Establishment politicians. Regrettably, the latter are all too ready to retrace the shameful path of appeasement trodden by their party forebears in the 1930s.
Then, just as now, the few lone voices who sounded the alarm were derided, and insulted with unpleasant name-calling. Yet they and their warnings were ultimately fully vindicated, fortunately in time to save our people from subjugation to a foreign power and an alien creed. The danger now is more insidious and, for that very reason, far more deadly. I only pray to God, (not Allah,) that our people, the indigenous British, awake to their danger in time to save ourselves from it.
Odd, that Melanchthon refers to the self-hatred of the Establishment and yet offers no explanation for it. Perhaps since he is, so he claims, a Christian and yet argues (however fallaciously) for the establishment of the archetypal supremacist religion and historically the deadly foe of Christianity, as our new state religion, he is very familiar with that self-hatred and perhaps also with masochistic tendencies.
November 13, 2010
Islam should become our state religion, by 'Melanchthon'
The Guardian became outraged when Iain Duncan Smith suggested that it was a "sin" that society had negligently abandonned 4.5 million people to live permanently on out-of work benefits instead of find ways to get them re-integrated into working life. His "mask" was said to have slipped, though he had "almost succeeded" in pretending there was a proper basis for his policies, more acceptable to our "secular society".
The absurdity of suggesting that Iain Duncan Smith's Christian motivations were any kind of secret and of criticising the use of moral categories to justify his policy approaches - only lefties are allowed to have morals, after all; to be Right Wing is, by definition, to be evil, seeking to impose final solutions on the poor, force them to eat rotting horse-flesh, and cleansing them from beyond the sight of nice middle class folk; any right-winger employing a moral term such as "wrong" or "sin" must have some sinister ulterior motivation - has been covered already by the Editor and by Cranmer.
What I want to add, though, is a challenge to this idea, underlying the Guardian's criticisms, that our society is "secular", by which the Guardian clearly means some combination of atheist materialist and agnostic. The reality is that no free society has even been secular, though a number of state structures have been. Our Establishment cannot, any longer, find inspiration in Christianity, so it must look elsewhere. I shall argue that the best alternative is Islam.
The majority religion in our society is, as it probably always has been, and probably has been in every significant human society, animism. As explored in a recent television show by Richard Dawkins, most people believe in some hotchpotch combination of astrology, chakras, healing crystals, reincarnation (think of past lives hypnosis), faith healers, ghosts and spirits. And that's before we start re-interpreting beliefs in aliens or the Illuminati in religious categories. Animism is the religion of The Folk, not atheism.
Leftist atheists (there are plenty of right-wing atheists, also, but they suffer from this particular error somewhat less) have a touching belief that because, as they see it, reason and evidence favour atheist materialism, society is destined eventually to become atheist materialist. Now obviously I dispute vigorously that reason or evidence favour atheist materialism - reason strongly favours philosophical monotheism and the belief in just desert for action (Islam is probably the religion most purely favoured by reason alone); whilst evidence runs contrary to reason in favouring Trinitarianism, and love and mercy as opposed to just desert (this clash between reason and evidence having been acknowledged and explored since the letters of St Paul). But that is not what I want to explore here. I want to challenge the notion that society could conceivably come to believe in atheist materialism even if it were recommended by reason and evidence. Recognising that that simply isn't an option has profound consequences for how a society's politics and constitution should be organised.
It requires a great deal of emotional and intellectual robustness to be a materialist atheist, because atheist materialism responds to the deepest questions of the human heart - "what's it all about?"; "what is truly meaningful and worthy?"; "there must be something more - what is it?"; "we cannot simply end, so what happens after we die?"; and others - it responds to these deep questions by the intellectual equivalent of sticking its fingers in its ears and crying "La, la, la, la! I'm not listening!", namely to intone "These are the wrong questions." Since that is so transparently unsatisfying a response, only very confident people can defy logic by proclaiming themselves satisfied by it. That is why the Dawkins, Atkins, and Hitchens of this world are so strident - they must yell loudly to drown out the discontented voices within.
Atheist materialism has no prospect of replacing orthodox religions (at least in anything remotely like its current forms). Its only contribution to the discussion can be that of the vandal - to destroy what it despises or does not understand leaving nothing of value in its place. The illusion of cleverness generated by atheist materialism has merely broken the confidence of the Establishment in its ability to sell orthodox religion to The Folk. Atheist materialism itself is obviously unsellable. So, without the credible and respectable critique of animism that orthodox religion provides, and only the fundamentally empty and implausible criticisms of animism that atheist materialism offers, The Folk feel no constraints upon the overt expression of what was always, in truth, their underlying superstition.
It is unclear how many in the Establishment were ever really convicted of the truths of orthodox religion, even in its pomp, but they certainly understood and respected its value as a guide and moral focus for policy-making, a discipline upon The Folk, and a key social binding force. The Somme and Passchendaele broke the British Establishment's confidence in itself and in its moral project, but Nihilism isn't any kind of long-term project. Self-pity, self-hatred and self-indulgence are understandable in the light of such terrible events, but at some point we must get over it.
I make no apologies about being a Christian, but I am pragmatic enough to recognise that the British Establishment finds it impossible, any longer, to accept any Christian inspiration for its projects. On the contrary, precisely because it retains certain of the forms of Christianity, the Establishment's self-hatred often takes the form of hating Christians. Individual Christians are oppressed, in our country, precisely because the Establishment still formally takes Christian inspiration but doesn't want it.
It's time to move on. We need to abandon the last vestiges of Christian role in our constitution, and regard Christians as the minority we are, entitled to proper protection in a liberal society of the sort we automatically extend to Muslims and Hindus. But we cannot hope to abandon religious inspiration in our constitution. All that does is create a disconnect between an irreligious polity and our ineliminably religious Folk, and will make our Establishment despised rather than perceived as the rulers and leaders it should be. So we must have something. As I have said above, Christians accept the dictats of evidence over intuitive reason, but Islam is the most straightforwardly intuitive religion of all. Its core doctrines make perfect sense: there is one God over all the earth; He is our creator; He commands obedience from us; He will judge us at the end of our lives sending the virtuous to paradise and the wicked to hell. How could it be any more obvious? Islam is also clearly tempting to our Establishment - they admire its disciplines, certainty, self-confidence and clear hierarchies of authority. If Muslim politicians express matters in moral categories or talk about their prayers, they are not condemned in the way that Christian politicians are. If our Establishment adopted Islam as its religion of inspiration, and we chose Islamic religious leaders to listen to as our society's moral guides, The Folk could be diverted from their superstitions and decadence into more morally purposeful and energetic projects. Our lethargic, morbid Establishment could be quickened into life by clear moral goals provided by those they could respect and listen to. Sunni Islam has also (and crucially), historically been the second most successful structure for promoting tolerant multi-cultural societies (behind Protestantism and ahead of Catholicism).
Our society is not the atheist materialist place that Guardian writers fondly imagine it, and it cannot and will not ever be so. Atheist materialism is simply not well-designed to provide a moral inspiration to societies, for the simple reason that it offers no answers to the big questions. Christianity cannot serve that role any longer in Britain, and the notion that it does has become a threat to individual devout Christians - the Establishment's self-hatred becomes manifest in oppression of Christians. The next best alternative is Islam. That would be the best way to go from here.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Those BFs!
Below is an extract from an article by Peter Mills, entitled "European Union - A Long Tradition Of Fiddling The Books", recently published on the web site of the British Freedom Party, or the BFs, as Martin Webster has wittily characterized them.
"Of course, there is another possible reason why this news has not gained much publicity in Britain; it is getting boringly repetitive. Believe it or not, the same thing happened last year. And the year before. And the year before that. In fact, the European Accounts have not received a cleared auditor’s certificate of authenticity for every one of the last 16 years! (3) (4) And, bearing in mind accounts are finalised at the end of a trading year, 16 years ago was November 1994, the end of the accounting year in which Great Britain signed the Lisbon Treaty (at the start of 1993)."
While few nationalists would demur at the article's thesis that the European Union is an irremediably corrupt and undemocratic body from which Britain should secede as soon as possible, the author makes a "howler" by confounding the Maastricht treaty (proper name: Treaty on European Union) which actually established, and gave its name to, the European Union, properly so called, and came into force in November 1993, with the very recent Lisbon treaty, which came into force in December 2009.
Mr Mills is either very uninformed about the European Union, or rather sloppy when it comes to proof-reading his own work.
Although the amusing sobriquet of "the BFs" was coined by Martin Webster in reference to the party's down-playing of the crucial issue of immigration, and their terror of being thought of as "racist", a few more howlers like this and it may begin to catch on for another reason.
Peter Mills seems to believe that if only the country were to be run like big business all would be well. Has he never heard of Enron, Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, Equitable Life, etc?
It all sounds like the kind of saloon bar Tory 'nationalism' one sees in the Daily Mail, or hears on TalkSport. Or, as the oleaginous Michael Howard (real name: Hecht, meaning Pike) put it in 2005, "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" To which my response is: tell me what you're thinking, and I'll tell you!
"Of course, there is another possible reason why this news has not gained much publicity in Britain; it is getting boringly repetitive. Believe it or not, the same thing happened last year. And the year before. And the year before that. In fact, the European Accounts have not received a cleared auditor’s certificate of authenticity for every one of the last 16 years! (3) (4) And, bearing in mind accounts are finalised at the end of a trading year, 16 years ago was November 1994, the end of the accounting year in which Great Britain signed the Lisbon Treaty (at the start of 1993)."
While few nationalists would demur at the article's thesis that the European Union is an irremediably corrupt and undemocratic body from which Britain should secede as soon as possible, the author makes a "howler" by confounding the Maastricht treaty (proper name: Treaty on European Union) which actually established, and gave its name to, the European Union, properly so called, and came into force in November 1993, with the very recent Lisbon treaty, which came into force in December 2009.
Mr Mills is either very uninformed about the European Union, or rather sloppy when it comes to proof-reading his own work.
Although the amusing sobriquet of "the BFs" was coined by Martin Webster in reference to the party's down-playing of the crucial issue of immigration, and their terror of being thought of as "racist", a few more howlers like this and it may begin to catch on for another reason.
Peter Mills seems to believe that if only the country were to be run like big business all would be well. Has he never heard of Enron, Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, Equitable Life, etc?
It all sounds like the kind of saloon bar Tory 'nationalism' one sees in the Daily Mail, or hears on TalkSport. Or, as the oleaginous Michael Howard (real name: Hecht, meaning Pike) put it in 2005, "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" To which my response is: tell me what you're thinking, and I'll tell you!
Sunday, 14 November 2010
The Terrifying Brilliance of Islam, by "Citizen Warrior"
An Inquiry Into Islam
A non-racist, unbigoted inquiry into the core teachings of Islam and what it all means (if anything) for non-Muslims
What Makes Islam So Successful?
IF YOU WANTED to deliberately design a collection of ideas with the purpose of making one that might eventually out-compete every other religion or political system on earth, you would be hard-pressed to do better than Islam.
Let's look at some of the individual ideas within the collection, keeping in mind that many of the ideas enhance each other. In other words, adding one idea to the others can make the whole collection more effective because some ideas work synergistically.
Here are some of the key components of the package of ideas (or bundle of beliefs) known as Islam:
1. A standardized version of the idea-collection is written down. This is something basic to several religions and isn't an Islamic invention, but it is an important factor in the success of Islam.
Something only transmitted orally can change over time, but something written will be identical a thousand years from now, and with modern printing presses, can be reproduced in the millions, giving it an enormous advantage in spreading identical copies of the idea-collection.
2. The Quran includes instructions for its own spread. It tells believers they must spread Islam. It is their holy duty to bring Mohammad's warnings and Islamic law to every corner of the world. Read more about that.
3. The idea-collection includes instructions for its own preservation, protection, and duplication. The Quran, the most important of the Islamic holy books, directly tells its followers that they can never change or modify or "modernize" any of the teachings within the idea-collection. It is perfect as it is. It is a capital sin to try to change it. This idea ensures the preservation of the whole collection.
These first three ideas are pretty standard for several successful religions. But now it gets interesting...
4. Islam commands its followers to create a government that supports it. This may be one of the most ingenious ideas in the whole collection. Islam is the only religion that uses it. Other groups of religious people have had political aspirations, but no other major religious group orders its followers — as a religious duty — to create a government that follows its own system of law.
Islam has a system of law, called Sharia, and all Muslims are obligated to continually strive to make their government — wherever they are — follow it. Because of some of the other ideas added to Islam, you will see that this political addition to the idea-collection has significant consequences.
Many people are under the impression that the goal of Islam is to convert everyone to Islam. This is not so. The prime directive of Islam is to bring all people on earth under the rule of Islamic law. Read more about the political nature of the core doctrines of Islam.
5. Permission to spread the religion by war. This is another successful innovation (source). Although some other religions have spread themselves using force, they had very little justification from their own religious doctrines to do so.
Not so with Islam. Expanding by conquest is very much accepted and encouraged by the idea-collection. Islamic teachings present it this way: The non-Muslims need to be saved from the sin of following laws other than Allah's. If they won't voluntarily change their laws to Sharia, then it is a Muslim's duty to insist. The world cannot be at peace until every government on earth follows the laws of Allah.
Mohammad's own experience showed the example — an example, says the Quran 91 times, that every Muslim should follow. At first, Mohammad tried to spread Islam by peaceful means. After thirteen years he'd gained 150 converts.
But then he changed tactics and started using caravan raids, warfare, executions, ransoming captives, and assassination, and within ten years he converted tens of thousands. After he died, his followers used the same tactics and converted millions. And by now it is one and a half billion.
The use of warfare combines synergistically and powerfully with the instruction to create an Islamic state. So Islam spread quickly as their armies got bigger. They conquered and set up Islamic states, most of which have lasted to this day, and the laws within an Islamic state make Islam very difficult to dislodge. The laws also make it very advantageous to convert to Islam.
This is one of the most effective methods ever invented for getting an idea-collection followed by huge numbers of people. It's a method of control and indoctrination similar to those used successfully in communist and totalitarian states. But as you'll discover below, Islam makes unique use of the power of the law to enforce complete conversion to the religion.
Islam started under unique conditions. All other major religions were started within an already-existing state. Islam is an historical exception to this rule.
Any organized government will, of course, put a stop to violent uprisings of a rebellious political group — especially one that wants to wage war and apply its own system of law. Christianity arose within the Roman Empire, for example. If Christianity had been a militant or political uprising, Rome would probably have killed or imprisoned the followers. Probably many military or political religions did start up then, but we've never heard of them. They couldn't get off the ground.
But Islam arose in Arabia when there was no central ruling power. The whole area was comprised of individual tribes. Under those circumstances, conversion by war and the use of force was possible.
6. Lands must be conquered. Lands that Islam has lost must be reconquered (Spain and Israel, for example). The Islamic empire must continually expand. Contraction is bad; expansion is good. So if a land was once Islamic and now it is not, that's contraction, and must be remedied.
According to Islamic teachings, the earth is Allah's. If there are parts of the earth not following Islamic law, it is the duty of the faithful to gain control of that land and establish Sharia. It is a sin to let it be.
7. The idea-collection provides new soldiers by allowing polygamy. According to Sharia law, a Muslim man can marry up to four wives, and he can have sex with as many slave girls as he wishes.
The Quran especially encourages men to marry widows. This is an important idea to add if you are going to be losing a lot of soldiers in war. You need some way of replenishing your army. Otherwise the idea-collection could die out from a lack of offspring. Read more about this principle.
8. It is a punishable offense to criticize Islam. You can see why this one is a good supporting idea for the collection. It helps suppress any ideas that would reduce the authority of Islamic ideas. This idea is in the Quran, and Mohammad set a fierce example of punishing people who criticized him or Islam. Read more about this principle.
9. You can't leave Islam once you're in. This is an interesting one. It is actually illegal in Islamic states to convert out of Islam. This is a critical part of Sharia law. Someone who has rejected Islam who was once a Muslim is an "apostate." This is a crime and a sin, and the punishment for it is death (and eternal damnation in hell thereafter).
Obviously, you can see why this idea has been included in the collection, but this one has actually caused Islam a problem because those who are following Islam to the letter consider more "moderate" Muslims (those who want to ignore or alter the more violent passages of the Quran) to be apostates. Since the punishment for apostates is death, fundamentalist Muslims are fighting modernizing Muslims all over the world, and keeping many rebellious, modernizing Muslims from speaking up for fear of death.
Every time a group of Muslims decides that maybe Islam should be updated for the 21st century and maybe women should have some rights and maybe the government should be more democratic, the devout Muslims call them apostates and discredit them or even try to kill them.
In this and in many other ways, Islam protects its own fidelity (in other words, the original idea-collection cannot be altered).
Another idea in Sharia law says it's against the law for anyone to try to convert a Muslim to another religion.
10. Islam must be your first allegiance. You are a Muslim first, before any allegiance you give to your family, your tribe, or your country.
This does two things: It causes a unity of people across borders which allows the group to grow bigger than any other entity. In other words, the "Nation of Islam" can grow bigger than any country, no matter how large (which gives the group a massive numerical advantage).
11. Dying while fighting for Islam is the ONLY way to guarantee a man's entrance into Paradise. This belief creates fearless, enthusiastic warriors, especially given the Quran's vivid descriptions of the sensuous delights of Paradise.
A Muslim man has a chance of getting to Paradise if he is a good Muslim, but it is not guaranteed. However, if he dies while fighting for Islam, he is guaranteed to get in, and that's the only thing he can do to guarantee it.
12. You must read the Quran in Arabic. This unites believers by language, and language has a very powerful unifying influence. For added incentive to learn Arabic, another basic Islamic principle says you can't go to Paradise unless you pray in Arabic.
So Muslims all over the world share a language. This makes it easier to coordinate far-reaching campaigns of protest, political pressure, and war. Read more about this principle.
13. You must pray five times a day. This is one of the five "pillars" — that is, one of the five central practices — of Islam. Within an Islamic state, this practice is enforced by law. Every Muslim must pray five times a day. The practice helps Islam dominate a Muslim's life, filling his daily rhythm with Islam.
It would be impossible to forget anything you deliberately do so often. Five times a day, every day, a Muslim must bow down and pray to Allah.
Research has shown that the more effort a person expends for a cause, the more he is likely to believe in it and value it. So this is a good way to eventually make believers out of people who became Muslims through coercion.
Islam completely takes over every aspect of Muslims' lives. Not only are they required to pray five times a day, they have to go through a washing ritual beforehand. Islam dictates the laws, and the laws cover many public and private behaviors. In an Islamic state, it is impossible to be a casual Muslim.
14. The prayers involve moving together in time. When Muslims pray, they all face the same direction, they bow down, get on their hands and knees, and put their face on the mat, all in unison, and then rise back up. Again and again.
When people move together in time, whether dancing or marching or praying, it creates a physical and emotional bond between them. That's why all military training involves close-order drill (marching in unison), even though it has been a long time since military groups have actually marched into combat. There is no longer a need for the skill, but military training retained the practice because it is so effective at creating a strong feeling of unity between soldiers.
The same is true of any physical movements people make in unison. So the method of prayer in Islam helps Muslims feel unified with each other.
15. A woman is in a thoroughly subordinate position. This idea really helps support other ideas in the collection. If women had too much influence, they'd try to curb the warring. Women in general don't like to send their husbands and sons off to war. But if women have no say in the matter, then the rest of the ideas can express themselves without interference. By subordinating women, the idea-collection prevents their effective vote against war, violence, and conquest.
The rules and laws within Islam that keep women subordinate are numerous. For example, she is not allowed to leave her house unless she is accompanied by a male relative. Under Islamic law, a woman is forbidden to be a head of state or a judge. She can only inherit half of what a man can inherit. In court, her testimony is only worth half of a man's. She is not allowed to choose where she will live or who she will marry. She is not allowed to marry a non-Muslim or divorce her husband. He, however, can divorce her with a wave of his hand. And according to Sharia, he can (and should) beat her if she disobeys him.
All of these ideas keep her subordinate, which helps keep the war machine going unimpeded by domestic rebellion. Read more about Islam's subordination of women.
16. The only way a woman can guarantee her passage into Paradise is if her husband is happy with her when she dies. When I read about this one, I thought, "Mohammad, you are a crafty one."
This idea obviously helps with the subjugation of women. It gives her a strong incentive to subordinate her wishes to her husband's, because while she might have a chance to get into Paradise if she's a good Muslim, the only way she can guarantee she will go to Paradise (and avoid eternal suffering in hell) is to make sure her husband is happy with her when she dies.
17. Allah gives Himself permission to edit his own work. This is an interesting one. It says in the Quran that if a passage written later contradicts an earlier passage, then the later one is the better one (read more about that). The Quran was written in sections (each section is one of Mohammad's revelations, known as a sura or chapter) over a period of 23 years. The circumstances of Mohammad's life and his religion changed quite a bit over those 23 years.
One of the ideas in the Quran is "this is the word of Allah." People had already memorized his earlier revelations, and it would seem a little strange for the all-knowing, infinitely wise Allah to change something He had already said. But with this idea that later revelations abrogated or overwrote earlier revelations when they contradicted, the newer ideas could be accepted. Allah could edit His work.
As I pointed out earlier, in his first 13 years of peacefully preaching, Mohammad only managed to win 150 followers. But as a military leader and violent conqueror, he was able to subjugate all of Arabia to Islamic law in less than 10 years. The peaceful ways were slow. Conversion by conquering and establishing Sharia was faster and more efficient.
The bad news for non-Muslims is that the later, violent, intolerant verses abrogate the earlier peaceful, more tolerant passages. Read more about which passages were abrogated and what the last passages say.
18. The Quran uses the carrot and stick to reinforce behavior. Throughout the book are vivid descriptions of hell, where sinners and non-Muslims have to drink boiling, stinking water, are thrown face down into a raging fire, and have to be there for eternity, suffering endless torments in agony. Read more about this.
There are also vivid descriptions of Paradise. In Paradise, believers wear green silk robes and recline on plush couches. Trees shade them, fruit dangles nearby. Believers have tasty food and refreshing drinks served to them in silver goblets.
But to have a chance of reaching Paradise, they must be devout Muslims. To guarantee it, they must die in jihad (for men) or make sure their husbands are always happy with them (for women).
19. Islam provides a huge and inspiring goal. Leaders of countries, companies, and religions have all discovered that you can get the most motivation and enthusiasm from your followers if you provide them with an expansive vision — an enormous goal. In the Islamic idea-collection, the goal calls for a continuous effort to expand the domain of Islamic law until the entire world is subjugated to it.
Many religions have the goal of converting others to the faith, but Islam has a method available nobody else has: To expand by seizing and converting governments to Sharia, or using the method of gaining one small, incremental concession or accomodation after another until Sharia law is being followed.
Once the whole world is following Islamic law, peace will reign. That's why even terrorists can say with complete sincerity, "Islam is a religion of peace."
The Quran says it's better if non-believers accept Islam and become Muslims without force. But if they refuse, then you must do what you can to at least get them to live by the laws of Allah. Read more about this.
So Muslims have been given quite a mission: To create a one-world government. An Islamic world. World peace. It is an enormous and inspiring and motivating goal, and creates a strong unity of purpose.
20. Non-Muslims must pay a large tax. Once a country is following Sharia law, non-Muslims are given the choice between becoming Muslim or becoming a dhimmi. Dhimmis are allowed to practice their non-Muslim religion if they pay the jizya (a tax). If they convert to Islam, they no longer have to pay the jizya. This obviously creates a practical incentive to convert. Read more.
This is ingenious. The tax takes money away from non-Muslims and their competing religions and gives that money to support Islam. The income from these taxes (usually a 25% income tax) helped fund the Islamic conquests during the first two major jihads. They conquered vast lands, most of them already filled with Christians and Jews, many of whom did not convert at first, and their jizya poured huge sums of money into the Islamic war machine.
Eventually, the numbers of Christians and Jews in those countries dwindled down as they converted or escaped (or in some cases, were massacred), until now, in most Islamic countries, Jews and Christians are very small minorities.
The tax-the-non-Muslims idea helps the Islamic idea-collection make more copies of itself by suppressing competing religions and financially supporting Islam.
Several ideas within Sharia law extend this effect. For example, non-Muslims are not allowed to build any new houses of worship. They're not even allowed to repair already-existing churches or synagogues. This puts the houses of worship of any competing religion in a state of permanent decline.
Also, non-Islamic prayers cannot be spoken within earshot of a Muslim — again, preventing Muslims from being infected by a competing religion. No public displays of any symbols of another faith may be shown either.
All of this prevents the spread of any competing ideas, and makes competing religions die out over time. That's why today there are so many "Muslim countries." Almost every other country in the world is made up of different religions, but because of these principles, Islam tends to displace all other beliefs and cultures wherever it becomes established.
21. A Muslim is forbidden to make friends with a non-Muslim. A Muslim is allowed to pretend to be a friend, but in his heart he must never actually be a friend to a non-Muslim. This is one of the best protections Islam has against Muslims leaving the faith because conversions a new religion are usually made because a friend introduced it. Being forbidden to make friends with non-Muslims helps prevent that from happening. (See Quran quotes about this.)
22. The Quran counsels the use of deceit when dealing with non-Muslims. Mohammad instructed one of his followers to lie if he had to (in order to assassinate one of Mohammad's enemies). This set a precedent, and the principle was clear: If it helps Islam, it's okay to deceive non-Muslims. Read more about this principle here: Lying (Taqiyya and Kitman). And here.
This instruction in the Quran has served Islamic goals very well through history. And it serves those goals today. On the DVD, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, you can watch real-life examples of Islamic leaders saying one thing in English for the Western press, and saying something entirely different to their own followers in Arabic a few days later.
Deceiving the enemy is always useful in war, and throughout history generals have used it. Islamic teachings consider Islam to be in a permanent state of war with the non-Islamic world until the whole world follows Sharia law (read more about that here). All non-Muslims living in non-Islamic states are "enemies." So deceiving Westerners is totally acceptable because deceiving an enemy in a state of war is totally acceptable. It is encouraged if it can forward the goals of the spread of Islam.
And so we have the strange phenomenon covered by Steven Emerson in Terrorists Among Us, where organizations in America were ostensibly raising money for orphans, but really giving the money to terrorists. They deceived good-hearted Western non-Muslims into giving money to organizations that were actively killing Western non-Muslims.
As it says in the Quran, "War is deceit." This idea gives Islam a tremendous advantage over idea-collections that encourage indiscriminate truthfulness.
23. Islam must always be defended. This idea is a primary linchpin that gives justification for war with almost anybody, as you'll see in the idea below. After the enemy is defeated, of course, Muslims must establish an Islamic state.
24. Islamic writings teach the use of pretext to initiate hostilities. The Quran devotes a lot of time complaining about people who did not support Mohammad when he first started his religion, with Allah often condemning them to torment in hell in the hereafter. The Quran is intensely intolerant of non-Muslims (source).
Mohammad was somewhat pushy and insistent with his religion, and when others felt intruded upon and protested, Mohammad took that to mean they were trying to stop Allah's holy prophet from bringing the revealed word of Allah to the world, so he was justified to fight them and destroy them as Allah's enemies. This is a demonstration of the principle of pretext.
Non-Muslims of the world need urgently to become aware of this principle. Of all the ideas in the Islamic collection, this is the most dangerous to the West because it removes our natural self-preserving defenses. The use of pretext tends to make the West defenseless against Islamic encroachments. And it tends to make the West confused about how to respond to violent Muslim reactions.
The use of pretext means you need only the barest excuse to begin hostilities. It means actually looking for an excuse, and even trying to provoke others into striking the first blow ("starting" the hostilities).
If the only way to get to Paradise is dying while fighting for Islam, you need hostilities. And if it is your holy duty to make all governments use Sharia law, you need to conquer non-Islamic governments. But you don't really want to look like the aggressor. Appearances count. All throughout the Quran, Mohammad tries to justify his aggression as defending Islam.
The Quran repeats 91 times that followers of Islam should use Mohammad as a model and imitate him. So Muslims the world over try to find or create grievances, so they can recruit new warriors, so they can get a holy war started, so they can fight and die in Allah's cause.
And because of the rise of multiculturalism (respect for all other cultures) in the West, the use of pretext is very effective against people who are unfamiliar with Islam. Many Westerners are concerned that al Qaeda is angry at the West for having troops in Saudi Arabia, for example. That's merely a pretext. They want all non-Muslims out of the Middle East. Then they say they will cease hostilities. It is a ridiculous and impossible goal, so they are justified in permanent war against the West to "defend" Islam.
It's surprising that so many Westerners accept this particular pretext because it flies in the face of a fundamental Western principle: Equality. What Osama bin Laden is saying is, "infidels are so undeserving, their very presence somewhere in Arabia defiles the entire country." Wow. What does that say about the non-Muslims?
Why doesn't this kind of racism or prejudice or infidelphobia (or whatever you want to call it) outrage more Westerners? Instead, many think we ought to pull out of the Middle East so we stop offending these poor Muslims.
The principle of pretext means you try to provoke a hostile reaction and then use the hostile reaction as a reason to escalate hostilities. It's the same method schoolyard bullies have used for thousands of years.
25. The explicit use of double standards. Islam has one standard for Muslims, and a different standard for non-Muslims, which always gives the advantage to Muslims and within a Muslim country, it provides incentives to convert.
For example, Islam must be spread by its believers, wherever they are. But when others try to spread their religions, Muslims are supposed to see it as an aggression against Islam — an act of aggression that must be "defended." Islam must always be defended.
As another example, when Islam is defamed in any way, Muslims should violently defend it. Even in a cartoon. But Muslims can and should defame Jews and Christians in Muslim newspapers and television, and they should defame any infidel or enemy, as they defame the U.S. today.
Here's another example: The Islamic supremacists of Saudi Arabia are pouring money into building mosques all over the free world. But according to Sharia law, which is the law in Saudi Arabia, no non-Muslim religious structures are allowed to be built.
Yet Muslims all over the world protest loudly and violently when anyone in Europe or America resists the building of more mosques in their countries.
Islamic supremacists don't see the irony in it. They don't feel strange having such an obvious double standard. They are, after all, Allah's followers and everyone else is deluded. Fairness and equality with such unworthy infidels would seem very out of place. A double standard seems completely appropriate from that perspective.
The double standard principle is a key part of the idea-collection, and it has been a great advantage in the spread of Islam (and the suppression of competing religions).
Sixty-one percent of the Quran is about non-Muslims and how to deal with them. Not one verse in the Quran about non-Muslims is positive (source).
26. It is forbidden to kill a Muslim (except for a just cause). It is not forbidden to kill a non-Muslim. This causes a bond between Muslims, fear in non-Muslims, and motivation to become Muslim. This is also another example of an explicit Islamic double standard.
27. If Muslims drift away from Mohammed's teachings, Allah will end the world. That makes converting others and promoting Islam a matter of survival. It also motivates Muslims to prevent each other from losing faith.
28. The message in a standard Quran is difficult to decipher. Whether it was done intentionally or not, the Quran's message has been scrambled and in a sense, coded. This discourages almost all non-Muslims and a significant percentage of Muslims from understanding it.
In what way is the message scrambled? First, the chapters are published out of order in every standard Quran. Rather than printing them using the chronological order in which they were revealed, the 114 chapters (suras) of the Quran are arranged using a baffling method: They're arranged in order from the longest chapter to the shortest. That's the traditional order.
When you read a standard Quran straight through like a normal book, the message is disjointed and the story jumps around and seems contradictory. One very important consequence of this curious disorder is that it hides the clear progression from Mohammad's semi-tolerance of non-Muslims to his violent hatred toward them.
The disorder also prevents anyone from figuring out which passages are abrogated unless they know the chronological order of the Quran.
The second way the Quran has been put into code is by putting the key somewhere else. Much of the Quran cannot be understood without being familiar with the life of Mohammad (by reading the Sira and the Hadith). These are primarily about Mohammad — what he said and did.
In other words, the Quran — the source book, the single most important holy book in Islam — can't be understood without the key, and the key can only be found somewhere else, which is similar to one of the ways a message can be written in code: Put the key to understanding the message somewhere else besides including it in the message. This is enough to keep most non-Muslims from understanding the Quran, and also keeps most Muslims on a need-to-know basis. So the only ones who really know what's going on are the imams and the scholars. They call the shots. Everyone else is in the dark.
If the Quran wasn't put in code deliberately, it has been a tremendously fortuitous accident which has served the goals of Islam very well throughout history. Fortunately, someone has unscrambled the Quran for us. Read more about that here.
WHAT SHOULD we do with this information about Islam? That's a good question. For some, the solution is to hate Muslims, but that doesn't make any sense. Most Muslims had no choice in their religion, and many of them don't know as much about their own religion as you now do.
I think the best thing any of us can do is to simply help other non-Muslims learn about Islam. Because Islam is so successful, its teachings are becoming more and more influencial on the world stage, and some of its built-in aggressiveness should be curbed. But the only way it can be curbed is if enough people know about it. The way we understand Islam will determine what policies we collectively endorse or reject about it.
So first, learn more about it. And then share what you know with others. And let them know what they can do about it too. To learn more, I suggest you first read the Quran. This is the version I recommend.
If you'd like to do something more, start here: What Can You Do About It?
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Beach Girl said...
Thank you. I give presentations to church groups in private homes. I also include lists of web sites. It is interesting and encouraging that with some guidance, people do want to know the threat we are up against and the chains that bind Muslims...
Thank you again.
July 31, 2010 12:54 PM
trencherbone said...
Islam is a meme or mind virus - the rabies of religions
July 31, 2010 1:24 PM
Anonymous said...
I think the "rabies of religions" is a cult. It certainly fits 85-95% of the criteria.
July 31, 2010 11:27 PM
Anonymous said...
Evidently there is no such thing as a moderate muslim, and if some claim to be they are not speaking for Islam. Nor do they get recognition from Islam.
August 5, 2010 10:51 AM
Anonymous said...
Having come from pre partition India from among Muslims, a moderate Muslim is a condition if it benifits Islam and un-till they are empowered, then they WILL kill the infidels
August 6, 2010 11:48 AM
Paul Marks said...
Some Muslims would deny a lot of the above (and I do NOT just mean people using the Islamic doctrine of deception), but there is a lot of evidence that is supportive of article (as produced by Robert Spencer and others).
As someone who is not an scholar of Islam (I can not even read Arabic) I can not know for sure - but one thing I can know, if people call for such articles to be banned (as "Islamiphobic" or whatever) then that proves there is truth in claims of Islamic hostility to freedom.
August 14, 2010 3:06 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
Well said, Paul. Good point.
The one thing about this issue that is good is that the doctrine we're talking about is easy to come by. The Quran is widely available, and it's not that long. So anyone can find out for themselves whether it's true or not.
I'm on a campaign. I hope to make it an international campaign. I want everybody to take the pledge and read the Quran. One version of the Quran takes out all the repetition and the book is only 203 pages long! Anyone can do that! And then all the wondering is over. You know for yourself what's true.
August 14, 2010 11:59 AM
Anonymous said...
I am guilty of thinking that Islam was a religion shared by People of the Book---Jews and Christians, that Muslims respected Christians and Jews. Actually, I want to get beyond the politically correct language and say that I now think that Islam is a SHITTY religion especially if you are a woman.
August 17, 2010 6:55 PM
Anonymous said...
Thanks for writing this. I found it because I was seeking to better understand the controversy regarding the ground zero mosque in NYC. The point about Muslims being forbidden to have non-Muslim friends irrevocably persuaded me that Islam should be "contained" not tolerated or respected. We don't treat lethal animals like housepets, and we shouldn't treat Islam like a civilized religion. On the other hand, an individual Muslim is more like a brainwashed person than an intentional wrong-doer. As a bonus, I now understand why the French banned burkas, and they are RIGHT!
August 18, 2010 3:22 PM
Adam Khan said...
Well said. Here's a good article on the Ground Zero mosque in NYC:
The Ground Zero Mosque
August 18, 2010 7:33 PM
Anonymous said...
If Islam is really an insidious diabolical just plain no-good religion, why can't we ban it in America? After all didn't we ban communism, make it a crime to be a communist? I haven't read all the articles out there but it looks like if we give in to the mosque, they will claim it as a symbolic victory and gradually get a stranglehold on America just like they are Islamizing Europe.
August 23, 2010 7:52 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
The main reason we won't ban Islam in America is that so many people who call themselves Muslims don't follow Islamic doctrine. From our perspective, they are Muslims in name only, and yet still ardently identify themselves as Muslims.
The closest thing to a real solution I have ever seen is Robert Spencer's proposal to legally separate the religious aspects of Islam from the political aspects.
August 23, 2010 2:00 PM
Anonymous said...
How many of you actually know a practising Muslim? All of you belong to an idea-collection of some sort filled with hate and given the chance violence.
You seem to conveniently ignore that violence is part of human nature (look at all riots etc, football hooliganism etc). More Muslims are being verbally and physically attacked in the west and you guys label them (Muslims)as terrorists?? With Islam, as you have correctly identified - you have the most brilliant system ever! and all this thought up by an illiterate Noble man from the dessert - shame on all you intelligent people who cannot conceive of a better system; but can attempt to extract the perceived good but reject the fact it comes from Allah your Creator. Examine his claim to prophet-hood you owe it to yourself.
August 25, 2010 8:06 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
Does it make a difference to the Islamic doctrine if we know a practicing Muslim? Read this:
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/01/my-friend-is-muslim-and-hes-really-nice.html
The existence of a nice Muslim does not invalidate the statement that Islamic teachings advocate intolerance and violence toward non-Muslims. The fact that you know a Muslim who knows how to get along with non-Muslims does not mean he would not also advocate imposing Shari'a law on non-Muslims, and does not mean he is not actively striving toward that goal. The fact that he is really nice does not mean he repudiates the supremacist nature of Islamic teachings. The existence of a Muslim who happens to be charming does not discredit a single thing I've said.
And Muslims are being verbally and physically attacked? Only in the Muslim mind. It is Mohammad's tactic to create a pretext to "defend Islam." To do that, Muslims have to be "persecuted." Here is a breakdown of religious hate crimes:
Anti-Jewish 969
Anti-Catholic 61
Anti-Protestant 57
Anti-Islamic 115
Anti-Other Religion 130
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 62
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 6
Source: http://dttj.blogspot.com/2008/11/hate-crimes-against-muslims-in-america.html
And how many Jews do you hear making a big stink about their abuse, which is far worse than Muslims'? Why? The need for pretext:
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2008/08/pretext-for-hostilities-in-islamic.html
August 25, 2010 1:46 PM
Anonymous said...
Thanks for replying to my post about banning Islam. I like what Macarthur did to Shintoism. They should do the same here and curb Islam's political and other aspirations. But in an effort to understand Islam better, I want to mention what this guy Ajami said on the Bill Bennett show today. He said 57% of Arabs are against the NY mosque. He went on to say that most muslims in other countries recognize and appreciate America's greatness and that muslims here (Daisy Khan and the imam) are the ones that are activists. He also shared a story about how a caliph who was 2nd to the prophet went to Jerusalem to accept its surrender and went to the Christian patriarch's church and when it was time to pray, asked him where he could roll out his prayer mat. The patriarch said he could do it right there and the caliph said no because then the muslims would claim it as their holy ground and the patriarch would lose control of the church, so he went outside to pray. That doesn't seem like spitting on one's grave and building a victory mosque.
I also want to add that yesterday's attack on the NY cabbie was horrific, totally uncalled for. Oh and that muslim woman Ameena who is director of CAIR and is the lawyer for the Disney discrimination case - well, I don't agree with her but I think she's pretty!
August 26, 2010 9:57 AM
Anonymous said...
Almost all, if not all, of these points also apply to Christianity. There most definitely are moderate Muslims, and the people behind the mosque proposed for 2 blocks from Ground Zero say a big part of their proposal is to give a face and presence to moderate Islam, as opposed to fundamentalist Islam. The Bible is filled with all kinds of stuff similarly: It's OK to stone adulterers, women should subjugate themselves to their husbands, Jesus is the only way, justification of holy wars (Remember the Crusades?), hellfire and brimstone, etc., etc. Just as so many (if not most) Christians do not take all these writings literally, all Muslims don't take their Islamic corrolaries literally. I find so much of these comments chilling, along with the atmosphere of anti-Muslim sentiment. (Note: I am not a Muslim!) Just as in Christianity, there are all shades of Islam. We know several very progressive, kind, loving, peaceful, enlightened Muslims who have nothing to do with the extreme fundamentalism which lay behind the 9/11 attacks.
It's ironic that there were places and times where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully; it's scarey that in this day and age it seems an ever-more-elusive goal.
September 3, 2010 9:04 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "Almost all, if not all, of these points also apply to Christianity."
Thank you for asking questions worth answering. In answer to your first statement, almost none of these points apply to practiced Christian doctrine. I'm not a Christian or a Jew. I don't have any religion. But it is such a common response that people use (that the Bible has violence in it too), I ended up writing up a list of some of the important differences between Christianity and Islam. You can read it here: Why I'm Worried About Islam But Not Christianity.
Another aspect of this I think is important is the nature of the violent statements in the Old Testament versus the Quran. In the Old Testament, the verses are applied to very specific places, times, and people. In the Quran, the verses are open-ended and for all time, such as "slay them (non-Muslims) wherever you find them." Here's much more about that aspect.
September 3, 2010 1:09 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "There most definitely are moderate Muslims, and the people behind the mosque proposed for 2 blocks from Ground Zero say a big part of their proposal is to give a face and presence to moderate Islam, as opposed to fundamentalist Islam."
There are definitely heterodox Muslims who disregard some of the teachings of their own doctrine, but it is explicitly forbidden to do so in the Quran, their most holy book. To employ only part of their teachings is considered apostasy, the penalty for which is death. Yes, many Muslims in Western democracies get away with apostasy for now, if they don't live in one of the Muslim-only enclaves that have sprung up all over Europe, where such apostasy can be life-threatening.
The whole concept of "moderate Islam" is suspect. For the most part, Muslims who are not interested in violence are considered moderate. If they are still interested in pursuing Islam's prime directive to bring all people on earth under the domination of Islamic law, but are doing it by peaceful but stealthy means, Muslims are generally considered to be "moderate." They may not be committed to non-violence because they abhor violence, but because it is tactically foolish for the accomplishment of long-term plans (and this has been expressed explicitly in documents siezed at the Holy Land Foundation trial), but to me this is not comforting in the slightest. The largest Islamic organization in the world, the Muslim Brotherhood, has made it their goal to dislodge non-Muslims from power in Western democracies by stealthy (and non-violent) means, and they have been pursuing this in America for decades.
September 3, 2010 1:10 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "The Bible is filled with all kinds of stuff similarly: It's OK to stone adulterers, women should subjugate themselves to their husbands, Jesus is the only way, justification of holy wars (Remember the Crusades?), hellfire and brimstone, etc., etc. Just as so many (if not most) Christians do not take all these writings literally, all Muslims don't take their Islamic corrolaries literally."
I appreciate your desire to learn more, and I hope you read more. I know it must seem to you I am a "hater" or "Islamophobe" or something, but I have simply tried to learn more about Islam, and found out a lot that most people are unaware of. I agree that the information is not pleasant.
Yes, it's true, there are similar passages in the Old Testament. But when is the last time you heard of someone being stoned to death by Christians or Jews? But it still happens today in Muslim countries. This is because Mohammad apparently learned something about how to make a religion stick to its teachings by watching how Jews and Christians did it. So in the Quran and in Mohammad's statements preserved in the Hadith, rules were laid down about the penalty for not following the teachings. There have been many movements in the Islamic world to "modernize" Islam, but counter-movements also come along to "get back to the basics" because Islamic doctrine is very explicit about this. It is not vague. It is not being done merely because people think they should get back to the basics. Allah Himself and Mohammad himself said straying from the path cannot be allowed and needs to be harshly punished. As a result, Islam, as it is practiced throughout the world, more closely follows all of its teachings than either Christianity or Judaism.
About the Crusades: Islam had taken over most of the Middle East by force (it was largely Christian when Islam began), part of India, most of North Africa, and had invaded up into Europe, seizing Spain. Islamic warriors had come north into Europe as far as modern-day France before they were stopped. Four of the five major centers of Christianity had been overrun and subjugated to Islam. The only one left was Rome. The Europeans were independent countries, usually competing with each other rather than cooperating, but when the beseiged Christians in the Middle East begged Rome to help them, Rome decided that one of the things that might possibly unite Europeans was their shared religion, so he called for a Crusade, not to try to free all the Christians who had fallen under the domination of Islamic rule, but to simply make it safe for Christians to make their pilgrimages to the Levant.
In other words, the Crusades were a late (and rather weak) response to about 400 years of Islamic aggression.
Some time ago, as part of the stealth jihad, some Muslims set themselves up as "historical accuracy checkers" for school textbooks in America. They made what seemed like a perfectly reasonable suggestion: If Islam is going to be mentioned in school textbooks, it should be checked with Islamic historians for accuracy before being printed. But what they did was to scrub Islam's image clean, and to give the false impression that the Crusades were an unprovoked attack on poor, innocent Muslim countries who were living in peace and harmony. Your perception is very common. It has been orchestrated carefully and they've done their job well. The purpose was to make Americans unsuspecting of Islam, and distrustful and suspicious of their own cultural heritage, and it has worked to a remarkable extent.
September 3, 2010 1:11 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "I find so many of these comments chilling, along with the atmosphere of anti-Muslim sentiment. (Note: I am not a Muslim!) Just as in Christianity, there are all shades of Islam. We know several very progressive, kind, loving, peaceful, enlightened Muslims who have nothing to do with the extreme fundamentalism which lay behind the 9/11 attacks."
When you learn about Islam, when you read the Quran, I'm afraid you will be even more chilled. It is shocking and disturbing in a way you now can't imagine. I had exactly your point of view before I began learning about this. And when I heard "anti-Muslim" statements, I distrusted the source. But I would like to say in my defense that after learning that there are 245 verses in the Quran that say something positive about non-Muslims, but they have all been abrogated, and that there are 527 verses in the Quran that say something negative about non-Muslims, including 109 that call for violence against non-Muslims, and that none of them have been abrogated, that I definitely developed an anti-Islam sentiment. As a non-Muslim, I see nothing about this that I like.
About the fact that you know some peaceful, loving Muslims: I do too. Three of them are my friends. They are truly three of the nicest people I know. Not one of them has read the Quran. That's part of the issue. There are lot of Muslims whose only knowledge of Islam comes from their heterodox parents, who happen to be nice people and who ignore much of Islam's teachings.
But another issue is perhaps more important here. The existence of nice Muslims does not invalidate the statement that Islamic teachings advocate intolerance and violence toward non-Muslims. The fact that you know a Muslim who knows how to get along with non-Muslims does not mean he would not also advocate imposing Sharia law on non-Muslims, and does not mean he is not actively striving toward that goal. The fact that he is really nice does not mean he repudiates the supremacist nature of Islamic teachings. The existence of a Muslim who happens to be charming does not discredit a single thing written in this article.
September 3, 2010 1:11 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "It's ironic that there were places and times where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully; it's scary that in this day and age it seems an ever-more-elusive goal."
When the Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully in Muslim-dominated countries, the Jews and Christians were subjugated second-class citizens. They were under the "dhimmi laws" where they paid the jizya (a tax for non-Muslims), where they couldn't hold any positions of authority over Muslims, where they were strictly limited in their ability to express their own religion, and where they were subject to occassional pogroms.
The reason living together peacefully seems an ever-more-elusive goal is that for the first time, non-Muslims are learning about Islam's political intentions before they were subjugated. Because of printing presses and the internet, and because of the large-scale attacks in New York, London and Madrid, which made many non-Muslims interested in learning more about Islam, more non-Muslims know about Islam than any time in history. Most subjugated non-Muslims in history had no idea what Islam was about until it was too late. It has often been illegal in Muslim countries for a non-Muslim to even touch a Quran, much less read it.
But those days are over. Not only is the Quran available in English in most bookstores in the free world, but many Qurans are available to read for free online. And to make things even better, unscrambled versions of the Quran are now available (the message in the Quran has been made difficult to decipher). Non-Muslims, for the first time in history, are learning about Islam.
Before making up your mind about any of this, I hope you will take the chance and read the Quran yourself. And then decide what is really true. I urge you to take the pledge and read the Quran.
Thank you for taking the time to make your comments.
September 3, 2010 1:12 PM
Anonymous said...
The Quran forbids pictures or statues of people for fear that others might revere that person. Today that sura is totally ignored. Mohammed drank mead which is a well known alcoholic beverage yet today muslims deny that mead is alcoholic and forbid the use of alcohol.
A non-racist, unbigoted inquiry into the core teachings of Islam and what it all means (if anything) for non-Muslims
What Makes Islam So Successful?
IF YOU WANTED to deliberately design a collection of ideas with the purpose of making one that might eventually out-compete every other religion or political system on earth, you would be hard-pressed to do better than Islam.
Let's look at some of the individual ideas within the collection, keeping in mind that many of the ideas enhance each other. In other words, adding one idea to the others can make the whole collection more effective because some ideas work synergistically.
Here are some of the key components of the package of ideas (or bundle of beliefs) known as Islam:
1. A standardized version of the idea-collection is written down. This is something basic to several religions and isn't an Islamic invention, but it is an important factor in the success of Islam.
Something only transmitted orally can change over time, but something written will be identical a thousand years from now, and with modern printing presses, can be reproduced in the millions, giving it an enormous advantage in spreading identical copies of the idea-collection.
2. The Quran includes instructions for its own spread. It tells believers they must spread Islam. It is their holy duty to bring Mohammad's warnings and Islamic law to every corner of the world. Read more about that.
3. The idea-collection includes instructions for its own preservation, protection, and duplication. The Quran, the most important of the Islamic holy books, directly tells its followers that they can never change or modify or "modernize" any of the teachings within the idea-collection. It is perfect as it is. It is a capital sin to try to change it. This idea ensures the preservation of the whole collection.
These first three ideas are pretty standard for several successful religions. But now it gets interesting...
4. Islam commands its followers to create a government that supports it. This may be one of the most ingenious ideas in the whole collection. Islam is the only religion that uses it. Other groups of religious people have had political aspirations, but no other major religious group orders its followers — as a religious duty — to create a government that follows its own system of law.
Islam has a system of law, called Sharia, and all Muslims are obligated to continually strive to make their government — wherever they are — follow it. Because of some of the other ideas added to Islam, you will see that this political addition to the idea-collection has significant consequences.
Many people are under the impression that the goal of Islam is to convert everyone to Islam. This is not so. The prime directive of Islam is to bring all people on earth under the rule of Islamic law. Read more about the political nature of the core doctrines of Islam.
5. Permission to spread the religion by war. This is another successful innovation (source). Although some other religions have spread themselves using force, they had very little justification from their own religious doctrines to do so.
Not so with Islam. Expanding by conquest is very much accepted and encouraged by the idea-collection. Islamic teachings present it this way: The non-Muslims need to be saved from the sin of following laws other than Allah's. If they won't voluntarily change their laws to Sharia, then it is a Muslim's duty to insist. The world cannot be at peace until every government on earth follows the laws of Allah.
Mohammad's own experience showed the example — an example, says the Quran 91 times, that every Muslim should follow. At first, Mohammad tried to spread Islam by peaceful means. After thirteen years he'd gained 150 converts.
But then he changed tactics and started using caravan raids, warfare, executions, ransoming captives, and assassination, and within ten years he converted tens of thousands. After he died, his followers used the same tactics and converted millions. And by now it is one and a half billion.
The use of warfare combines synergistically and powerfully with the instruction to create an Islamic state. So Islam spread quickly as their armies got bigger. They conquered and set up Islamic states, most of which have lasted to this day, and the laws within an Islamic state make Islam very difficult to dislodge. The laws also make it very advantageous to convert to Islam.
This is one of the most effective methods ever invented for getting an idea-collection followed by huge numbers of people. It's a method of control and indoctrination similar to those used successfully in communist and totalitarian states. But as you'll discover below, Islam makes unique use of the power of the law to enforce complete conversion to the religion.
Islam started under unique conditions. All other major religions were started within an already-existing state. Islam is an historical exception to this rule.
Any organized government will, of course, put a stop to violent uprisings of a rebellious political group — especially one that wants to wage war and apply its own system of law. Christianity arose within the Roman Empire, for example. If Christianity had been a militant or political uprising, Rome would probably have killed or imprisoned the followers. Probably many military or political religions did start up then, but we've never heard of them. They couldn't get off the ground.
But Islam arose in Arabia when there was no central ruling power. The whole area was comprised of individual tribes. Under those circumstances, conversion by war and the use of force was possible.
6. Lands must be conquered. Lands that Islam has lost must be reconquered (Spain and Israel, for example). The Islamic empire must continually expand. Contraction is bad; expansion is good. So if a land was once Islamic and now it is not, that's contraction, and must be remedied.
According to Islamic teachings, the earth is Allah's. If there are parts of the earth not following Islamic law, it is the duty of the faithful to gain control of that land and establish Sharia. It is a sin to let it be.
7. The idea-collection provides new soldiers by allowing polygamy. According to Sharia law, a Muslim man can marry up to four wives, and he can have sex with as many slave girls as he wishes.
The Quran especially encourages men to marry widows. This is an important idea to add if you are going to be losing a lot of soldiers in war. You need some way of replenishing your army. Otherwise the idea-collection could die out from a lack of offspring. Read more about this principle.
8. It is a punishable offense to criticize Islam. You can see why this one is a good supporting idea for the collection. It helps suppress any ideas that would reduce the authority of Islamic ideas. This idea is in the Quran, and Mohammad set a fierce example of punishing people who criticized him or Islam. Read more about this principle.
9. You can't leave Islam once you're in. This is an interesting one. It is actually illegal in Islamic states to convert out of Islam. This is a critical part of Sharia law. Someone who has rejected Islam who was once a Muslim is an "apostate." This is a crime and a sin, and the punishment for it is death (and eternal damnation in hell thereafter).
Obviously, you can see why this idea has been included in the collection, but this one has actually caused Islam a problem because those who are following Islam to the letter consider more "moderate" Muslims (those who want to ignore or alter the more violent passages of the Quran) to be apostates. Since the punishment for apostates is death, fundamentalist Muslims are fighting modernizing Muslims all over the world, and keeping many rebellious, modernizing Muslims from speaking up for fear of death.
Every time a group of Muslims decides that maybe Islam should be updated for the 21st century and maybe women should have some rights and maybe the government should be more democratic, the devout Muslims call them apostates and discredit them or even try to kill them.
In this and in many other ways, Islam protects its own fidelity (in other words, the original idea-collection cannot be altered).
Another idea in Sharia law says it's against the law for anyone to try to convert a Muslim to another religion.
10. Islam must be your first allegiance. You are a Muslim first, before any allegiance you give to your family, your tribe, or your country.
This does two things: It causes a unity of people across borders which allows the group to grow bigger than any other entity. In other words, the "Nation of Islam" can grow bigger than any country, no matter how large (which gives the group a massive numerical advantage).
11. Dying while fighting for Islam is the ONLY way to guarantee a man's entrance into Paradise. This belief creates fearless, enthusiastic warriors, especially given the Quran's vivid descriptions of the sensuous delights of Paradise.
A Muslim man has a chance of getting to Paradise if he is a good Muslim, but it is not guaranteed. However, if he dies while fighting for Islam, he is guaranteed to get in, and that's the only thing he can do to guarantee it.
12. You must read the Quran in Arabic. This unites believers by language, and language has a very powerful unifying influence. For added incentive to learn Arabic, another basic Islamic principle says you can't go to Paradise unless you pray in Arabic.
So Muslims all over the world share a language. This makes it easier to coordinate far-reaching campaigns of protest, political pressure, and war. Read more about this principle.
13. You must pray five times a day. This is one of the five "pillars" — that is, one of the five central practices — of Islam. Within an Islamic state, this practice is enforced by law. Every Muslim must pray five times a day. The practice helps Islam dominate a Muslim's life, filling his daily rhythm with Islam.
It would be impossible to forget anything you deliberately do so often. Five times a day, every day, a Muslim must bow down and pray to Allah.
Research has shown that the more effort a person expends for a cause, the more he is likely to believe in it and value it. So this is a good way to eventually make believers out of people who became Muslims through coercion.
Islam completely takes over every aspect of Muslims' lives. Not only are they required to pray five times a day, they have to go through a washing ritual beforehand. Islam dictates the laws, and the laws cover many public and private behaviors. In an Islamic state, it is impossible to be a casual Muslim.
14. The prayers involve moving together in time. When Muslims pray, they all face the same direction, they bow down, get on their hands and knees, and put their face on the mat, all in unison, and then rise back up. Again and again.
When people move together in time, whether dancing or marching or praying, it creates a physical and emotional bond between them. That's why all military training involves close-order drill (marching in unison), even though it has been a long time since military groups have actually marched into combat. There is no longer a need for the skill, but military training retained the practice because it is so effective at creating a strong feeling of unity between soldiers.
The same is true of any physical movements people make in unison. So the method of prayer in Islam helps Muslims feel unified with each other.
15. A woman is in a thoroughly subordinate position. This idea really helps support other ideas in the collection. If women had too much influence, they'd try to curb the warring. Women in general don't like to send their husbands and sons off to war. But if women have no say in the matter, then the rest of the ideas can express themselves without interference. By subordinating women, the idea-collection prevents their effective vote against war, violence, and conquest.
The rules and laws within Islam that keep women subordinate are numerous. For example, she is not allowed to leave her house unless she is accompanied by a male relative. Under Islamic law, a woman is forbidden to be a head of state or a judge. She can only inherit half of what a man can inherit. In court, her testimony is only worth half of a man's. She is not allowed to choose where she will live or who she will marry. She is not allowed to marry a non-Muslim or divorce her husband. He, however, can divorce her with a wave of his hand. And according to Sharia, he can (and should) beat her if she disobeys him.
All of these ideas keep her subordinate, which helps keep the war machine going unimpeded by domestic rebellion. Read more about Islam's subordination of women.
16. The only way a woman can guarantee her passage into Paradise is if her husband is happy with her when she dies. When I read about this one, I thought, "Mohammad, you are a crafty one."
This idea obviously helps with the subjugation of women. It gives her a strong incentive to subordinate her wishes to her husband's, because while she might have a chance to get into Paradise if she's a good Muslim, the only way she can guarantee she will go to Paradise (and avoid eternal suffering in hell) is to make sure her husband is happy with her when she dies.
17. Allah gives Himself permission to edit his own work. This is an interesting one. It says in the Quran that if a passage written later contradicts an earlier passage, then the later one is the better one (read more about that). The Quran was written in sections (each section is one of Mohammad's revelations, known as a sura or chapter) over a period of 23 years. The circumstances of Mohammad's life and his religion changed quite a bit over those 23 years.
One of the ideas in the Quran is "this is the word of Allah." People had already memorized his earlier revelations, and it would seem a little strange for the all-knowing, infinitely wise Allah to change something He had already said. But with this idea that later revelations abrogated or overwrote earlier revelations when they contradicted, the newer ideas could be accepted. Allah could edit His work.
As I pointed out earlier, in his first 13 years of peacefully preaching, Mohammad only managed to win 150 followers. But as a military leader and violent conqueror, he was able to subjugate all of Arabia to Islamic law in less than 10 years. The peaceful ways were slow. Conversion by conquering and establishing Sharia was faster and more efficient.
The bad news for non-Muslims is that the later, violent, intolerant verses abrogate the earlier peaceful, more tolerant passages. Read more about which passages were abrogated and what the last passages say.
18. The Quran uses the carrot and stick to reinforce behavior. Throughout the book are vivid descriptions of hell, where sinners and non-Muslims have to drink boiling, stinking water, are thrown face down into a raging fire, and have to be there for eternity, suffering endless torments in agony. Read more about this.
There are also vivid descriptions of Paradise. In Paradise, believers wear green silk robes and recline on plush couches. Trees shade them, fruit dangles nearby. Believers have tasty food and refreshing drinks served to them in silver goblets.
But to have a chance of reaching Paradise, they must be devout Muslims. To guarantee it, they must die in jihad (for men) or make sure their husbands are always happy with them (for women).
19. Islam provides a huge and inspiring goal. Leaders of countries, companies, and religions have all discovered that you can get the most motivation and enthusiasm from your followers if you provide them with an expansive vision — an enormous goal. In the Islamic idea-collection, the goal calls for a continuous effort to expand the domain of Islamic law until the entire world is subjugated to it.
Many religions have the goal of converting others to the faith, but Islam has a method available nobody else has: To expand by seizing and converting governments to Sharia, or using the method of gaining one small, incremental concession or accomodation after another until Sharia law is being followed.
Once the whole world is following Islamic law, peace will reign. That's why even terrorists can say with complete sincerity, "Islam is a religion of peace."
The Quran says it's better if non-believers accept Islam and become Muslims without force. But if they refuse, then you must do what you can to at least get them to live by the laws of Allah. Read more about this.
So Muslims have been given quite a mission: To create a one-world government. An Islamic world. World peace. It is an enormous and inspiring and motivating goal, and creates a strong unity of purpose.
20. Non-Muslims must pay a large tax. Once a country is following Sharia law, non-Muslims are given the choice between becoming Muslim or becoming a dhimmi. Dhimmis are allowed to practice their non-Muslim religion if they pay the jizya (a tax). If they convert to Islam, they no longer have to pay the jizya. This obviously creates a practical incentive to convert. Read more.
This is ingenious. The tax takes money away from non-Muslims and their competing religions and gives that money to support Islam. The income from these taxes (usually a 25% income tax) helped fund the Islamic conquests during the first two major jihads. They conquered vast lands, most of them already filled with Christians and Jews, many of whom did not convert at first, and their jizya poured huge sums of money into the Islamic war machine.
Eventually, the numbers of Christians and Jews in those countries dwindled down as they converted or escaped (or in some cases, were massacred), until now, in most Islamic countries, Jews and Christians are very small minorities.
The tax-the-non-Muslims idea helps the Islamic idea-collection make more copies of itself by suppressing competing religions and financially supporting Islam.
Several ideas within Sharia law extend this effect. For example, non-Muslims are not allowed to build any new houses of worship. They're not even allowed to repair already-existing churches or synagogues. This puts the houses of worship of any competing religion in a state of permanent decline.
Also, non-Islamic prayers cannot be spoken within earshot of a Muslim — again, preventing Muslims from being infected by a competing religion. No public displays of any symbols of another faith may be shown either.
All of this prevents the spread of any competing ideas, and makes competing religions die out over time. That's why today there are so many "Muslim countries." Almost every other country in the world is made up of different religions, but because of these principles, Islam tends to displace all other beliefs and cultures wherever it becomes established.
21. A Muslim is forbidden to make friends with a non-Muslim. A Muslim is allowed to pretend to be a friend, but in his heart he must never actually be a friend to a non-Muslim. This is one of the best protections Islam has against Muslims leaving the faith because conversions a new religion are usually made because a friend introduced it. Being forbidden to make friends with non-Muslims helps prevent that from happening. (See Quran quotes about this.)
22. The Quran counsels the use of deceit when dealing with non-Muslims. Mohammad instructed one of his followers to lie if he had to (in order to assassinate one of Mohammad's enemies). This set a precedent, and the principle was clear: If it helps Islam, it's okay to deceive non-Muslims. Read more about this principle here: Lying (Taqiyya and Kitman). And here.
This instruction in the Quran has served Islamic goals very well through history. And it serves those goals today. On the DVD, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, you can watch real-life examples of Islamic leaders saying one thing in English for the Western press, and saying something entirely different to their own followers in Arabic a few days later.
Deceiving the enemy is always useful in war, and throughout history generals have used it. Islamic teachings consider Islam to be in a permanent state of war with the non-Islamic world until the whole world follows Sharia law (read more about that here). All non-Muslims living in non-Islamic states are "enemies." So deceiving Westerners is totally acceptable because deceiving an enemy in a state of war is totally acceptable. It is encouraged if it can forward the goals of the spread of Islam.
And so we have the strange phenomenon covered by Steven Emerson in Terrorists Among Us, where organizations in America were ostensibly raising money for orphans, but really giving the money to terrorists. They deceived good-hearted Western non-Muslims into giving money to organizations that were actively killing Western non-Muslims.
As it says in the Quran, "War is deceit." This idea gives Islam a tremendous advantage over idea-collections that encourage indiscriminate truthfulness.
23. Islam must always be defended. This idea is a primary linchpin that gives justification for war with almost anybody, as you'll see in the idea below. After the enemy is defeated, of course, Muslims must establish an Islamic state.
24. Islamic writings teach the use of pretext to initiate hostilities. The Quran devotes a lot of time complaining about people who did not support Mohammad when he first started his religion, with Allah often condemning them to torment in hell in the hereafter. The Quran is intensely intolerant of non-Muslims (source).
Mohammad was somewhat pushy and insistent with his religion, and when others felt intruded upon and protested, Mohammad took that to mean they were trying to stop Allah's holy prophet from bringing the revealed word of Allah to the world, so he was justified to fight them and destroy them as Allah's enemies. This is a demonstration of the principle of pretext.
Non-Muslims of the world need urgently to become aware of this principle. Of all the ideas in the Islamic collection, this is the most dangerous to the West because it removes our natural self-preserving defenses. The use of pretext tends to make the West defenseless against Islamic encroachments. And it tends to make the West confused about how to respond to violent Muslim reactions.
The use of pretext means you need only the barest excuse to begin hostilities. It means actually looking for an excuse, and even trying to provoke others into striking the first blow ("starting" the hostilities).
If the only way to get to Paradise is dying while fighting for Islam, you need hostilities. And if it is your holy duty to make all governments use Sharia law, you need to conquer non-Islamic governments. But you don't really want to look like the aggressor. Appearances count. All throughout the Quran, Mohammad tries to justify his aggression as defending Islam.
The Quran repeats 91 times that followers of Islam should use Mohammad as a model and imitate him. So Muslims the world over try to find or create grievances, so they can recruit new warriors, so they can get a holy war started, so they can fight and die in Allah's cause.
And because of the rise of multiculturalism (respect for all other cultures) in the West, the use of pretext is very effective against people who are unfamiliar with Islam. Many Westerners are concerned that al Qaeda is angry at the West for having troops in Saudi Arabia, for example. That's merely a pretext. They want all non-Muslims out of the Middle East. Then they say they will cease hostilities. It is a ridiculous and impossible goal, so they are justified in permanent war against the West to "defend" Islam.
It's surprising that so many Westerners accept this particular pretext because it flies in the face of a fundamental Western principle: Equality. What Osama bin Laden is saying is, "infidels are so undeserving, their very presence somewhere in Arabia defiles the entire country." Wow. What does that say about the non-Muslims?
Why doesn't this kind of racism or prejudice or infidelphobia (or whatever you want to call it) outrage more Westerners? Instead, many think we ought to pull out of the Middle East so we stop offending these poor Muslims.
The principle of pretext means you try to provoke a hostile reaction and then use the hostile reaction as a reason to escalate hostilities. It's the same method schoolyard bullies have used for thousands of years.
25. The explicit use of double standards. Islam has one standard for Muslims, and a different standard for non-Muslims, which always gives the advantage to Muslims and within a Muslim country, it provides incentives to convert.
For example, Islam must be spread by its believers, wherever they are. But when others try to spread their religions, Muslims are supposed to see it as an aggression against Islam — an act of aggression that must be "defended." Islam must always be defended.
As another example, when Islam is defamed in any way, Muslims should violently defend it. Even in a cartoon. But Muslims can and should defame Jews and Christians in Muslim newspapers and television, and they should defame any infidel or enemy, as they defame the U.S. today.
Here's another example: The Islamic supremacists of Saudi Arabia are pouring money into building mosques all over the free world. But according to Sharia law, which is the law in Saudi Arabia, no non-Muslim religious structures are allowed to be built.
Yet Muslims all over the world protest loudly and violently when anyone in Europe or America resists the building of more mosques in their countries.
Islamic supremacists don't see the irony in it. They don't feel strange having such an obvious double standard. They are, after all, Allah's followers and everyone else is deluded. Fairness and equality with such unworthy infidels would seem very out of place. A double standard seems completely appropriate from that perspective.
The double standard principle is a key part of the idea-collection, and it has been a great advantage in the spread of Islam (and the suppression of competing religions).
Sixty-one percent of the Quran is about non-Muslims and how to deal with them. Not one verse in the Quran about non-Muslims is positive (source).
26. It is forbidden to kill a Muslim (except for a just cause). It is not forbidden to kill a non-Muslim. This causes a bond between Muslims, fear in non-Muslims, and motivation to become Muslim. This is also another example of an explicit Islamic double standard.
27. If Muslims drift away from Mohammed's teachings, Allah will end the world. That makes converting others and promoting Islam a matter of survival. It also motivates Muslims to prevent each other from losing faith.
28. The message in a standard Quran is difficult to decipher. Whether it was done intentionally or not, the Quran's message has been scrambled and in a sense, coded. This discourages almost all non-Muslims and a significant percentage of Muslims from understanding it.
In what way is the message scrambled? First, the chapters are published out of order in every standard Quran. Rather than printing them using the chronological order in which they were revealed, the 114 chapters (suras) of the Quran are arranged using a baffling method: They're arranged in order from the longest chapter to the shortest. That's the traditional order.
When you read a standard Quran straight through like a normal book, the message is disjointed and the story jumps around and seems contradictory. One very important consequence of this curious disorder is that it hides the clear progression from Mohammad's semi-tolerance of non-Muslims to his violent hatred toward them.
The disorder also prevents anyone from figuring out which passages are abrogated unless they know the chronological order of the Quran.
The second way the Quran has been put into code is by putting the key somewhere else. Much of the Quran cannot be understood without being familiar with the life of Mohammad (by reading the Sira and the Hadith). These are primarily about Mohammad — what he said and did.
In other words, the Quran — the source book, the single most important holy book in Islam — can't be understood without the key, and the key can only be found somewhere else, which is similar to one of the ways a message can be written in code: Put the key to understanding the message somewhere else besides including it in the message. This is enough to keep most non-Muslims from understanding the Quran, and also keeps most Muslims on a need-to-know basis. So the only ones who really know what's going on are the imams and the scholars. They call the shots. Everyone else is in the dark.
If the Quran wasn't put in code deliberately, it has been a tremendously fortuitous accident which has served the goals of Islam very well throughout history. Fortunately, someone has unscrambled the Quran for us. Read more about that here.
WHAT SHOULD we do with this information about Islam? That's a good question. For some, the solution is to hate Muslims, but that doesn't make any sense. Most Muslims had no choice in their religion, and many of them don't know as much about their own religion as you now do.
I think the best thing any of us can do is to simply help other non-Muslims learn about Islam. Because Islam is so successful, its teachings are becoming more and more influencial on the world stage, and some of its built-in aggressiveness should be curbed. But the only way it can be curbed is if enough people know about it. The way we understand Islam will determine what policies we collectively endorse or reject about it.
So first, learn more about it. And then share what you know with others. And let them know what they can do about it too. To learn more, I suggest you first read the Quran. This is the version I recommend.
If you'd like to do something more, start here: What Can You Do About It?
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Beach Girl said...
Thank you. I give presentations to church groups in private homes. I also include lists of web sites. It is interesting and encouraging that with some guidance, people do want to know the threat we are up against and the chains that bind Muslims...
Thank you again.
July 31, 2010 12:54 PM
trencherbone said...
Islam is a meme or mind virus - the rabies of religions
July 31, 2010 1:24 PM
Anonymous said...
I think the "rabies of religions" is a cult. It certainly fits 85-95% of the criteria.
July 31, 2010 11:27 PM
Anonymous said...
Evidently there is no such thing as a moderate muslim, and if some claim to be they are not speaking for Islam. Nor do they get recognition from Islam.
August 5, 2010 10:51 AM
Anonymous said...
Having come from pre partition India from among Muslims, a moderate Muslim is a condition if it benifits Islam and un-till they are empowered, then they WILL kill the infidels
August 6, 2010 11:48 AM
Paul Marks said...
Some Muslims would deny a lot of the above (and I do NOT just mean people using the Islamic doctrine of deception), but there is a lot of evidence that is supportive of article (as produced by Robert Spencer and others).
As someone who is not an scholar of Islam (I can not even read Arabic) I can not know for sure - but one thing I can know, if people call for such articles to be banned (as "Islamiphobic" or whatever) then that proves there is truth in claims of Islamic hostility to freedom.
August 14, 2010 3:06 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
Well said, Paul. Good point.
The one thing about this issue that is good is that the doctrine we're talking about is easy to come by. The Quran is widely available, and it's not that long. So anyone can find out for themselves whether it's true or not.
I'm on a campaign. I hope to make it an international campaign. I want everybody to take the pledge and read the Quran. One version of the Quran takes out all the repetition and the book is only 203 pages long! Anyone can do that! And then all the wondering is over. You know for yourself what's true.
August 14, 2010 11:59 AM
Anonymous said...
I am guilty of thinking that Islam was a religion shared by People of the Book---Jews and Christians, that Muslims respected Christians and Jews. Actually, I want to get beyond the politically correct language and say that I now think that Islam is a SHITTY religion especially if you are a woman.
August 17, 2010 6:55 PM
Anonymous said...
Thanks for writing this. I found it because I was seeking to better understand the controversy regarding the ground zero mosque in NYC. The point about Muslims being forbidden to have non-Muslim friends irrevocably persuaded me that Islam should be "contained" not tolerated or respected. We don't treat lethal animals like housepets, and we shouldn't treat Islam like a civilized religion. On the other hand, an individual Muslim is more like a brainwashed person than an intentional wrong-doer. As a bonus, I now understand why the French banned burkas, and they are RIGHT!
August 18, 2010 3:22 PM
Adam Khan said...
Well said. Here's a good article on the Ground Zero mosque in NYC:
The Ground Zero Mosque
August 18, 2010 7:33 PM
Anonymous said...
If Islam is really an insidious diabolical just plain no-good religion, why can't we ban it in America? After all didn't we ban communism, make it a crime to be a communist? I haven't read all the articles out there but it looks like if we give in to the mosque, they will claim it as a symbolic victory and gradually get a stranglehold on America just like they are Islamizing Europe.
August 23, 2010 7:52 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
The main reason we won't ban Islam in America is that so many people who call themselves Muslims don't follow Islamic doctrine. From our perspective, they are Muslims in name only, and yet still ardently identify themselves as Muslims.
The closest thing to a real solution I have ever seen is Robert Spencer's proposal to legally separate the religious aspects of Islam from the political aspects.
August 23, 2010 2:00 PM
Anonymous said...
How many of you actually know a practising Muslim? All of you belong to an idea-collection of some sort filled with hate and given the chance violence.
You seem to conveniently ignore that violence is part of human nature (look at all riots etc, football hooliganism etc). More Muslims are being verbally and physically attacked in the west and you guys label them (Muslims)as terrorists?? With Islam, as you have correctly identified - you have the most brilliant system ever! and all this thought up by an illiterate Noble man from the dessert - shame on all you intelligent people who cannot conceive of a better system; but can attempt to extract the perceived good but reject the fact it comes from Allah your Creator. Examine his claim to prophet-hood you owe it to yourself.
August 25, 2010 8:06 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
Does it make a difference to the Islamic doctrine if we know a practicing Muslim? Read this:
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/01/my-friend-is-muslim-and-hes-really-nice.html
The existence of a nice Muslim does not invalidate the statement that Islamic teachings advocate intolerance and violence toward non-Muslims. The fact that you know a Muslim who knows how to get along with non-Muslims does not mean he would not also advocate imposing Shari'a law on non-Muslims, and does not mean he is not actively striving toward that goal. The fact that he is really nice does not mean he repudiates the supremacist nature of Islamic teachings. The existence of a Muslim who happens to be charming does not discredit a single thing I've said.
And Muslims are being verbally and physically attacked? Only in the Muslim mind. It is Mohammad's tactic to create a pretext to "defend Islam." To do that, Muslims have to be "persecuted." Here is a breakdown of religious hate crimes:
Anti-Jewish 969
Anti-Catholic 61
Anti-Protestant 57
Anti-Islamic 115
Anti-Other Religion 130
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 62
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 6
Source: http://dttj.blogspot.com/2008/11/hate-crimes-against-muslims-in-america.html
And how many Jews do you hear making a big stink about their abuse, which is far worse than Muslims'? Why? The need for pretext:
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2008/08/pretext-for-hostilities-in-islamic.html
August 25, 2010 1:46 PM
Anonymous said...
Thanks for replying to my post about banning Islam. I like what Macarthur did to Shintoism. They should do the same here and curb Islam's political and other aspirations. But in an effort to understand Islam better, I want to mention what this guy Ajami said on the Bill Bennett show today. He said 57% of Arabs are against the NY mosque. He went on to say that most muslims in other countries recognize and appreciate America's greatness and that muslims here (Daisy Khan and the imam) are the ones that are activists. He also shared a story about how a caliph who was 2nd to the prophet went to Jerusalem to accept its surrender and went to the Christian patriarch's church and when it was time to pray, asked him where he could roll out his prayer mat. The patriarch said he could do it right there and the caliph said no because then the muslims would claim it as their holy ground and the patriarch would lose control of the church, so he went outside to pray. That doesn't seem like spitting on one's grave and building a victory mosque.
I also want to add that yesterday's attack on the NY cabbie was horrific, totally uncalled for. Oh and that muslim woman Ameena who is director of CAIR and is the lawyer for the Disney discrimination case - well, I don't agree with her but I think she's pretty!
August 26, 2010 9:57 AM
Anonymous said...
Almost all, if not all, of these points also apply to Christianity. There most definitely are moderate Muslims, and the people behind the mosque proposed for 2 blocks from Ground Zero say a big part of their proposal is to give a face and presence to moderate Islam, as opposed to fundamentalist Islam. The Bible is filled with all kinds of stuff similarly: It's OK to stone adulterers, women should subjugate themselves to their husbands, Jesus is the only way, justification of holy wars (Remember the Crusades?), hellfire and brimstone, etc., etc. Just as so many (if not most) Christians do not take all these writings literally, all Muslims don't take their Islamic corrolaries literally. I find so much of these comments chilling, along with the atmosphere of anti-Muslim sentiment. (Note: I am not a Muslim!) Just as in Christianity, there are all shades of Islam. We know several very progressive, kind, loving, peaceful, enlightened Muslims who have nothing to do with the extreme fundamentalism which lay behind the 9/11 attacks.
It's ironic that there were places and times where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully; it's scarey that in this day and age it seems an ever-more-elusive goal.
September 3, 2010 9:04 AM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "Almost all, if not all, of these points also apply to Christianity."
Thank you for asking questions worth answering. In answer to your first statement, almost none of these points apply to practiced Christian doctrine. I'm not a Christian or a Jew. I don't have any religion. But it is such a common response that people use (that the Bible has violence in it too), I ended up writing up a list of some of the important differences between Christianity and Islam. You can read it here: Why I'm Worried About Islam But Not Christianity.
Another aspect of this I think is important is the nature of the violent statements in the Old Testament versus the Quran. In the Old Testament, the verses are applied to very specific places, times, and people. In the Quran, the verses are open-ended and for all time, such as "slay them (non-Muslims) wherever you find them." Here's much more about that aspect.
September 3, 2010 1:09 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "There most definitely are moderate Muslims, and the people behind the mosque proposed for 2 blocks from Ground Zero say a big part of their proposal is to give a face and presence to moderate Islam, as opposed to fundamentalist Islam."
There are definitely heterodox Muslims who disregard some of the teachings of their own doctrine, but it is explicitly forbidden to do so in the Quran, their most holy book. To employ only part of their teachings is considered apostasy, the penalty for which is death. Yes, many Muslims in Western democracies get away with apostasy for now, if they don't live in one of the Muslim-only enclaves that have sprung up all over Europe, where such apostasy can be life-threatening.
The whole concept of "moderate Islam" is suspect. For the most part, Muslims who are not interested in violence are considered moderate. If they are still interested in pursuing Islam's prime directive to bring all people on earth under the domination of Islamic law, but are doing it by peaceful but stealthy means, Muslims are generally considered to be "moderate." They may not be committed to non-violence because they abhor violence, but because it is tactically foolish for the accomplishment of long-term plans (and this has been expressed explicitly in documents siezed at the Holy Land Foundation trial), but to me this is not comforting in the slightest. The largest Islamic organization in the world, the Muslim Brotherhood, has made it their goal to dislodge non-Muslims from power in Western democracies by stealthy (and non-violent) means, and they have been pursuing this in America for decades.
September 3, 2010 1:10 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "The Bible is filled with all kinds of stuff similarly: It's OK to stone adulterers, women should subjugate themselves to their husbands, Jesus is the only way, justification of holy wars (Remember the Crusades?), hellfire and brimstone, etc., etc. Just as so many (if not most) Christians do not take all these writings literally, all Muslims don't take their Islamic corrolaries literally."
I appreciate your desire to learn more, and I hope you read more. I know it must seem to you I am a "hater" or "Islamophobe" or something, but I have simply tried to learn more about Islam, and found out a lot that most people are unaware of. I agree that the information is not pleasant.
Yes, it's true, there are similar passages in the Old Testament. But when is the last time you heard of someone being stoned to death by Christians or Jews? But it still happens today in Muslim countries. This is because Mohammad apparently learned something about how to make a religion stick to its teachings by watching how Jews and Christians did it. So in the Quran and in Mohammad's statements preserved in the Hadith, rules were laid down about the penalty for not following the teachings. There have been many movements in the Islamic world to "modernize" Islam, but counter-movements also come along to "get back to the basics" because Islamic doctrine is very explicit about this. It is not vague. It is not being done merely because people think they should get back to the basics. Allah Himself and Mohammad himself said straying from the path cannot be allowed and needs to be harshly punished. As a result, Islam, as it is practiced throughout the world, more closely follows all of its teachings than either Christianity or Judaism.
About the Crusades: Islam had taken over most of the Middle East by force (it was largely Christian when Islam began), part of India, most of North Africa, and had invaded up into Europe, seizing Spain. Islamic warriors had come north into Europe as far as modern-day France before they were stopped. Four of the five major centers of Christianity had been overrun and subjugated to Islam. The only one left was Rome. The Europeans were independent countries, usually competing with each other rather than cooperating, but when the beseiged Christians in the Middle East begged Rome to help them, Rome decided that one of the things that might possibly unite Europeans was their shared religion, so he called for a Crusade, not to try to free all the Christians who had fallen under the domination of Islamic rule, but to simply make it safe for Christians to make their pilgrimages to the Levant.
In other words, the Crusades were a late (and rather weak) response to about 400 years of Islamic aggression.
Some time ago, as part of the stealth jihad, some Muslims set themselves up as "historical accuracy checkers" for school textbooks in America. They made what seemed like a perfectly reasonable suggestion: If Islam is going to be mentioned in school textbooks, it should be checked with Islamic historians for accuracy before being printed. But what they did was to scrub Islam's image clean, and to give the false impression that the Crusades were an unprovoked attack on poor, innocent Muslim countries who were living in peace and harmony. Your perception is very common. It has been orchestrated carefully and they've done their job well. The purpose was to make Americans unsuspecting of Islam, and distrustful and suspicious of their own cultural heritage, and it has worked to a remarkable extent.
September 3, 2010 1:11 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "I find so many of these comments chilling, along with the atmosphere of anti-Muslim sentiment. (Note: I am not a Muslim!) Just as in Christianity, there are all shades of Islam. We know several very progressive, kind, loving, peaceful, enlightened Muslims who have nothing to do with the extreme fundamentalism which lay behind the 9/11 attacks."
When you learn about Islam, when you read the Quran, I'm afraid you will be even more chilled. It is shocking and disturbing in a way you now can't imagine. I had exactly your point of view before I began learning about this. And when I heard "anti-Muslim" statements, I distrusted the source. But I would like to say in my defense that after learning that there are 245 verses in the Quran that say something positive about non-Muslims, but they have all been abrogated, and that there are 527 verses in the Quran that say something negative about non-Muslims, including 109 that call for violence against non-Muslims, and that none of them have been abrogated, that I definitely developed an anti-Islam sentiment. As a non-Muslim, I see nothing about this that I like.
About the fact that you know some peaceful, loving Muslims: I do too. Three of them are my friends. They are truly three of the nicest people I know. Not one of them has read the Quran. That's part of the issue. There are lot of Muslims whose only knowledge of Islam comes from their heterodox parents, who happen to be nice people and who ignore much of Islam's teachings.
But another issue is perhaps more important here. The existence of nice Muslims does not invalidate the statement that Islamic teachings advocate intolerance and violence toward non-Muslims. The fact that you know a Muslim who knows how to get along with non-Muslims does not mean he would not also advocate imposing Sharia law on non-Muslims, and does not mean he is not actively striving toward that goal. The fact that he is really nice does not mean he repudiates the supremacist nature of Islamic teachings. The existence of a Muslim who happens to be charming does not discredit a single thing written in this article.
September 3, 2010 1:11 PM
Citizen Warrior said...
You wrote, "It's ironic that there were places and times where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully; it's scary that in this day and age it seems an ever-more-elusive goal."
When the Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully in Muslim-dominated countries, the Jews and Christians were subjugated second-class citizens. They were under the "dhimmi laws" where they paid the jizya (a tax for non-Muslims), where they couldn't hold any positions of authority over Muslims, where they were strictly limited in their ability to express their own religion, and where they were subject to occassional pogroms.
The reason living together peacefully seems an ever-more-elusive goal is that for the first time, non-Muslims are learning about Islam's political intentions before they were subjugated. Because of printing presses and the internet, and because of the large-scale attacks in New York, London and Madrid, which made many non-Muslims interested in learning more about Islam, more non-Muslims know about Islam than any time in history. Most subjugated non-Muslims in history had no idea what Islam was about until it was too late. It has often been illegal in Muslim countries for a non-Muslim to even touch a Quran, much less read it.
But those days are over. Not only is the Quran available in English in most bookstores in the free world, but many Qurans are available to read for free online. And to make things even better, unscrambled versions of the Quran are now available (the message in the Quran has been made difficult to decipher). Non-Muslims, for the first time in history, are learning about Islam.
Before making up your mind about any of this, I hope you will take the chance and read the Quran yourself. And then decide what is really true. I urge you to take the pledge and read the Quran.
Thank you for taking the time to make your comments.
September 3, 2010 1:12 PM
Anonymous said...
The Quran forbids pictures or statues of people for fear that others might revere that person. Today that sura is totally ignored. Mohammed drank mead which is a well known alcoholic beverage yet today muslims deny that mead is alcoholic and forbid the use of alcohol.
BNP proved right about GM menace
The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops
By Andrew Malone
Last updated at 12:48 AM on 3rd November 2008
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it's even WORSE than he feared.
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father's body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.
As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India's economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.
Human tragedy: A farmer and child in India's 'suicide belt'
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years' earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.
There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on - they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless - as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.
Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.
As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. 'He was a loving and caring man,' she said, weeping quietly.
'But he couldn't take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.'
Shankara's crop had failed - twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India's ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Distressed: Prince Charles has set up charity Bhumi Vardaan Foundation to address the plight of suicide farmers
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning 'the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming... from the failure of many GM crop varieties'.
Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.
The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace 'the future' and follow suit.
So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the 'suicide belt' in Maharashtra state.
What I found was deeply disturbing - and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.
Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide - a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.
It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.
Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and 'agrarian distress' that is the real reason for the horrific toll.
But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.
Death seeds: A Greenpeace protester sprays milk-based paint on a Monsanto research soybean field near Atlantic, Iowa
In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands - only to kill themselves as well.
Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed - two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.
She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. 'He cries when he thinks of his mother,' said the dead woman's aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.
Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.
In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.
Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.
As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.
'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.'
Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.'
Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.
'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.'
Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a 'factor in this tragedy'. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as 'untimely rain' or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.
Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.
During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three 'independent' surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more expensive - and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.
(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is 'only double' the price of 'official' non-GM seed - but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by 'unscrupulous' merchants, who often also sell 'fake' GM seeds which are prone to disease.)
With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. 'We just want to escape from our problems,' one said. 'We just want help to stop any more of us dying.'
Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.
India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,' his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.'
But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it's the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' - the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these 'magic seeds'.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html#ixzz15HZ9j4QC
By Andrew Malone
Last updated at 12:48 AM on 3rd November 2008
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it's even WORSE than he feared.
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father's body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.
As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India's economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.
Human tragedy: A farmer and child in India's 'suicide belt'
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years' earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.
There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on - they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless - as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.
Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.
As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. 'He was a loving and caring man,' she said, weeping quietly.
'But he couldn't take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.'
Shankara's crop had failed - twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India's ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Distressed: Prince Charles has set up charity Bhumi Vardaan Foundation to address the plight of suicide farmers
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning 'the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming... from the failure of many GM crop varieties'.
Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.
The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace 'the future' and follow suit.
So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the 'suicide belt' in Maharashtra state.
What I found was deeply disturbing - and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.
Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide - a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.
It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.
Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and 'agrarian distress' that is the real reason for the horrific toll.
But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.
Death seeds: A Greenpeace protester sprays milk-based paint on a Monsanto research soybean field near Atlantic, Iowa
In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands - only to kill themselves as well.
Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed - two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.
She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. 'He cries when he thinks of his mother,' said the dead woman's aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.
Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.
In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.
Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.
As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.
'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.'
Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.'
Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.
'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.'
Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a 'factor in this tragedy'. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as 'untimely rain' or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.
Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.
During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three 'independent' surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more expensive - and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.
(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is 'only double' the price of 'official' non-GM seed - but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by 'unscrupulous' merchants, who often also sell 'fake' GM seeds which are prone to disease.)
With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. 'We just want to escape from our problems,' one said. 'We just want help to stop any more of us dying.'
Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.
India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,' his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.'
But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it's the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' - the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these 'magic seeds'.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html#ixzz15HZ9j4QC
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