May 232017
 

I woke up this morning to the news of the Manchester bombing this morning; learning about what was going on from a forum that had attracted some of the more rancid members of the far right. Who were busy blaming this atrocity on all muslims, but also on Syrian refugees; all this of course before anyone knew any facts because facts are irrelevant to the bigoted far right.

And a particularly nasty piece of work has labelled the victims “sluts” and “whores” (I’ve linked to a site that discusses his comments in order not to give him any extra ad revenue).

Now I am not in the habit of being sympathetic to any religious group – they all believe in imaginary friends. But they’re people and in many cases my fellow countrymen, so when a gang of pathetic little chickenshit cowards labels all muslims as terrorists, it is time to call them out on their bigoted bullshit.

Yes the evil scum who set off the bomb was a muslim; one born in Britain and not a Syrian refugee.

But :-

  1. It is almost certain that some of the 60 ambulances that attended were crewed by a muslim or two.
  2. It is almost certain that some of the police who were there helping people out were muslims.
  3. It is almost certain that some of those who opened their homes to accommodate stranded
  4. Some of the taxi drivers who turned off their meters and offered free lifts to those stranded were muslims.

Of course Mancunians of all faiths and none rallied around and helped out, but as muslims were being painted with the terrorism brush, it seems reasonable to highlight that many of those helping out were muslims.

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.

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.

Sep 092006
 

There are many people today are worried about what fundamentalist moslems are up to with their suicide bombers, insistence on sharia law, and general intolerance. They are half right.

We don’t have to worry about muslims any more than we have to worry about christians, hindus, or buddhists. It is the fundamentalists that we should be worried about. Whatever religion they claim as their own, their real religion is fundamentalism. It is not enough for them to worship their god, but they want to impose their god on everyone else without regard to how impractical that is.

And the more extreme fundamentalists are prepared to go to almost any lengths to get to their goal … a world that only tolerates the worship of one god and has no tolerance for any diversity. They don’t recognise and are not capable of recognising that people of a different religeon can be worthy in any way or even have any right to exist.

Whether it is desireable or not, such a world cannot and will never exist because there are more than one kind of fundamentalist in the world, and some of us will not tolerate being told what god to worship. The only result a fundamentalist is capable of producing is ferrocious conflict between like-minded “nutters of god” who just happen to worship different gods.