Muslims Against Crusades Threatening The Royal Wedding

 History, Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Apr 222011
 

There’s a bunch of moronic Muslims who call themselves the Muslims Against Crusades who have announced that they are going to be organising a demonstation during the royal wedding. The sad thing is that they are not the only morons out there – search for “Muslims Against Crusades” and you will find numerous links to intemperate responses that in my opinion count as hate speech against all Muslims.

Every community has its lunatic fringe – Muslims included. And the MAC crew definitely qualify for that tag. After all, what is the point of campaigning about the crusades ? They’re ancient history.

Whatever anybody thinks about the crusades or what the west is currently doing in the middle-east, the two really are not linked. If you’re really cynical you might believe that the west is enforcing its views on the middle-east to get hold of the oil. But that has nothing to do with the crusades which were about religion and reconquering land that had previously been conquered by Islamic invaders – yes the first “crusades” were the start of the reconquest of Spain by Christian kingdoms against Islamic invaders who had conquered Christian lands.

The lunatic fringe makes a big point about how nasty the crusaders were back in the (nearly) dark ages. What they are forgetting is that was just how barbaric Europeans made war back then – whether we were fighting Muslims, Christians, or pagans. Or just fighting each other. If you have a complaint about how the world is today, and make ridiculous comparisons to the distant past you will look like a fool.

Now we turn to the other side who seems to think every Muslim springs fully formed from the forehead of a rogue Imam with a copy of the Koran in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. They are just as moronic; whilst there are Muslims who have extremist views, they are in a minority compared with the majority. Forcing all Muslims in the UK out of the country because of the views of a small minority would be just as bad as hanging an entire village because one of the villagers show a deer belonging to the King.

And why try to spoil the wedding day of what are probably a reasonably nice couple ? If you want to make a political point with a demonstration, there are plenty of other days when you can make your point known. Like the opening of parliament, the Queen’s birthday (the official one not the real one), etc. It is probably this that demonstrates beyond anything else that MAC are a bunch of losers with no real support in the Muslim community.

Burning The Koran on 9/11

 Politics, Religion  1 Response »
Sep 082010
 

Will he; won’t he ? That dumb American pastor who has promised to burn the Koran. I’m guessing he probably will after all it’s not every day that a piece of white trash like Terry Jones attracts this much attention. He’s the pastor of a third-rate church with at most 50 in his congregation showing that he isn’t even a particularly good frothing extremist like others in the US. In other words, he needs the publicity to keep going – why else would he announce this foolish escapade this year and not in previous years after 2001?

Of course it is probably offensive to Muslims everywhere; hell it’s even offensive to me, and I don’t like any organised religion – to me this is the burning of one of the great works of literature. It is also offensive that a knuckle-dragging white trash pastor cannot distinguish between the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims and the fanatical fringe.  Perhaps he can’t count over 10 without taking his socks off – after all there are in excess of 1.7 billion Muslims in the world today and if they were all inclined to violence, we would have a lot more terrorist attacks than we do.

Perhaps people are fooled by the rhetoric; the wild protests and threats of violence that we sometimes see take place in the Islamic world. Well, there is a big difference between what you say you will do, and what you are actually prepared to carry out. Who hasn’t said “I’ll kill him” in a moment of stress and anger ? And yet the overwhelming majority of us will never conceive of actually carrying out a killing such as that – the outburst is a way of releasing stress. Perhaps not quite the same, but bear in mind that what we say is not the same as what we do.

According to this article on terrorist attacks in the US, no more than 6% of all terrorist incidents in the US since 1980. 6% ? Unbelievable isn’t it ? Well the figures came from a report by the FBI which is available here (although you will have to do your own number crunching). It seems that Jewish terrorists are (just) more likely to commit terrorist acts in the US as Islamic terrorists. To bring in another source, the Europol report on the terrorist situation in 2009 (published in 2010) shows that of 294 terrorist incidents (including foiled attacks), just 1 was committed by an Islamic terrorist – an even lower percentage of 0.3%

Strikes me that those 1.7 billion Muslims are either exceptionally lazy, or are just not that interested in being terrorists. Undoubtedly people will point to Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as examples of just how active Islamic terrorists can be – fair point, but in all cases those are exceptional circumstances. And besides the overwhelming majority of the victims are Muslims themselves – if anything one might say that the “Islamic” terrorists are actually enemies of Islam as they seem to prefer killing their co-religionists to non-Muslims.

Back to our white trash pastor. Despite showing every intention of burning the Koran, it would have been nice if the world could have ignored him – that is what he deserves. Perhaps understandably, the Islamic world doesn’t feel this way and is undoubtedly working up to widespread protests on September 11th, and undoubtedly the tiny minority of Muslims who are actually terrorists will be planning their own form of reaction against this.

It is worth pointing out (no matter how little good it will do) that the reaction to our white trash pastor is almost universally negative in the western world.

France Bans The Niqab !!

 Media, Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Jul 132010
 

Actually that isn’t quite the case – it is still in the process of being banned as of today. And of course the law actually reads something along the lines “people are prohibited from concealing their faces in public”. But we all know that it’s to ban Muslim women from wearing the full face veil or niqab.

I have mentioned the niqab before, so I will not be saying too much in this post.

France’s law may be a little over the top, but I do not believe that it is any more anti-Islamic than a law against beating your wife is anti-Islamic. Muslims in France may believe that France’s new law is anti-Islamic, but it is more a reaction against the perceived misogynistic tendencies behind the wearing of the niqab.

Muslims are saying that we should be more accepting of cultural differences when it comes to considering the niqab; I don’t disagree, but the negative image of the full face veil in Western society should also be considered when considering wearing the niqab. As mentioned before, an Islamic woman is still capable of demonstrating her “modesty” by wearing a burka despite not wearing the face veil, and by doing so she is showing her acceptance of Western cultural sensitivities.

Prevent – Unfairly Targetting Muslims?

 Politics  1 Response »
Mar 302010
 

The UK government’s Prevent scheme has been accused of unfairly targeting the UK’s Muslim community. Except for the “unfair” bit, it is fair to say it does exactly that – and that is what it was setup to do. Specifically to counteract those on the fringes of the Muslim community who target young Muslims and attempt to “radicalise” them in the hopes that they can be recruited into terrorism.

Young people tend to be passionate about what they care about, and that includes politics. They often want to see change at a faster rate than is realistic, which makes them vulnerable to extremists who want to use violence to achieve their ends. Imagine if an initiative such as Prevent were underway at the beginnings of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland  in the 1960s – would the terrorism have lasted as long as it did ? Well we obviously don’t know, but it is a shame that it wasn’t tried.

The fact is that young Muslims are more likely to end up as terrorists than any other particular group of young people. Radical Christians might end up bellowing out that we all sinners, but that is just irritating and bad manners. Young hedonists may end up making a mess on the pavement at peculiar times of the night; whilst we might disapprove, it hardly compares to a suicide load of explosives.

Now of course most young Muslims are not going to wind up blowing themselves and lots of innocent people up; they are not even going to take a trip to the kind of summer camp where you learn how an AK47 works. But some are at risk of becoming radicalised and becoming terrorists.

If we can target those who are at greater risk of becoming radicalised and somehow persuade them that it is a bad idea, we can both protect ourselves and those young people. Those who say this is unfairly targeting the Muslim community are ignoring the fact that this benefits the Muslim community as much as it benefits the rest of us.

Perhaps they should ask the parents of those young people who have been killed whether persuading their sons and daughters to take another path is unfair.

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