Diary

Forget imperialism, Archbishop. Think of your suffering flock.

27 November, 2007

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times…There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.”

These were the fine words of Lord Carey last year in a forthright address on Islam and the West. You would never hear those words from his quietly spoken, but very left wing, successor.

Archbishop Rowan Williams prefers to wallow in the delusion that craven submission to the enemies of the West will overcome all evil. Forget tough military action, not even tough words are justified, especially when it comes to the persecution of his own flock.

Consider the tenor of his remarks to Emel magazine a few days ago when he chose to focus his ire on America’s shortcomings as an ‘imperial’ power. America had lost the moral high grounds since 9/11, he believed. She was a ‘global hegemonic power’ intent on accumulating ‘influence and control’ rather than territory. He was perplexed by the use of violence which was a ‘quick discharge of frustration’ which did not ‘serve the situation.’ He went on: “A lot of the pressure around the invasion of Iraq was ‘We’ve got to do something. Then we’ll feel better. That’s very dangerous.” Iraq’s Christian community was now suffering, he believed, because they were being identified ‘with the West.’

Fine, you might argue. He is a critic of the Iraq war who relishes every chance to show his disdain for the conflict. Indeed given America’s short sighted strategy since 2003, it is hard to disagree with his critique, even if it is expressed in somewhat simplistic terms.

But then he turns his ire to Israel. The West Bank security fence (he is adamant that it is a wall) has ‘colossal’ human costs and therefore cannot be justified, a point he also made on a visit to Bethlehem last year. The implication of his visit then, and his words now, is that Israel, and its Western backers, are mostly responsible for Christian suffering in ‘Palestine.’ Of course this is a historical nonsense. The Christian population in pre 1967 Israel has steadily increased, benefiting from a form of religious tolerance to be found nowhere else in the Middle East, while their diminishing number of co-religionists in the Palestinian territories have borne the brunt of Islamization for years. His analysis hooks on to the wrong target.

But in a way his view is worse than misguided. By focusing on American imperialism and Israeli occupation, Rowan Williams chooses to gloss over the profound problems in the Middle East, especially when they concern his fellow Christians.

Consider the facts for one moment. In Iran the Christian population is now a quarter of what it was before the Islamic Revolution. There are many documented cases of persecution, including the assassination of bishops and the forcible closure of churches. According to the Jubilee campaign, Iran’s persecution of Christians ‘has decimated the leadership of the Protestant evangelical community in that country and created an atmosphere of terror under which the church is presently suffering.’

In Saudi Arabia Christians can be arrested and publicly lashed for practicing their faith while their Bibles are burned by the religious police. In Egypt, the Christian Coptic community has suffered frequent attacks by Islamists while in Sudan, more than a million Christians have been killed by the Arab Janjaweed since the 1980s.

According to Christian Solidarity International, the ‘historical process of Islamization’ in Syria has transformed its ‘once thriving Christian majority’ into a ‘small frightened community’ whose ‘existence is under threat.’ The Christian population in Lebanon has also been decimated, due to emigration during the Civil Wars. In last year’s summer war, Hezbollah used Christian villages as human shields.

So what does Rowan Williams say in the face of this onslaught by radical Islam? In Pakistan he is apparently ‘surprised by how the extremely small Christian minority there is perceived as so deeply threatening by an overwhelming Muslim majority which ought to be more confident and generous about its identity.’ His beleaguered flock are hardly likely to be cheered by such an underwhelming statement!

Then it gets worse. The Muslim world’s “present political solutions aren’t always very impressive,” he declares. No, really? I fear that when the Taleban enslave women, when Sudanese Islamists carry out ghastly massacres, when an Iranian President denies the Holocaust, when a Saudi regime imprisons people for possessing Bibles and when Arab regimes systematically violate human rights on such a massive scale, one can be excused for using stronger language. Even if one is an Archbishop.

Some may forgive his critique of American imperialism, even his misguided analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is a bishop saturated in political correctness, after all. What one cannot excuse is how he allows his political agenda to mitigate his condemnation of Christian suffering elsewhere.

Persecuted Christians will little care for Rowan Williams’ self indulgent diatribes. What they care about is their own persecution.

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The Oxford Union finally commits suicide

26 November, 2007

Oxford’s students should be hanging their heads in shame today after voting to allow David Irving and Nick Griffin to address their Union. Their decision has brought this great academic institution to its knees with a savage, self inflicted wound. It has shamed one of the world’s great universities and its renowned debating society.

President Luke Tryl tried to justify his invitation by arguing that ‘stopping them from speaking only allows them to become free speech martyrs.’ This is a misguided observation for several reasons. Irving and Griffin will continue to claim ‘martyrdom’ for as long as they are (rightly) denounced as extremists spouting pernicious drivel. And they are perfectly free to spout this pernicious drivel so long as they do not flout our incitement laws.

What Mr. Tryl ignores is that denying these men a platform at Oxford is very different to censoring them. As Julian Lewis MP rightly remarked: “It's not an issue of free speech to offer someone a privileged platform from a prestige organisation."

The Oxford Union should host speakers who respect the rigour of academic debate, not those who denigrate it. Irving is a proven ‘falsifier’ of history and a manipulator of the historical record. Nick Griffin has described the Holocaust as a ‘Holohoax’ and written a pamphlet alleging Jewish control of the British media. Both men are trapped by their own paranoid conspiracy theories in which ‘malevolent’ Jewry figures large. They are as divorced from reality as it is possible to get and they do not deserve a respectable platform.

But instead of grasping this point, these Oxford students have chosen the Bollinger path of self indulgent, misguided liberalism. By doing so, they have irreparably tarnished the reputation of a renowned institution.

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Being good without god: A brief review of ‘The God Delusion’

25 November, 2007

God has had a pretty bad press of late. A group of angry men, most recently Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great have led the great rallying cry for secularism in a world dominated by supernatural belief. If there is an aggressive ‘new secularism,’ then Richard Dawkins is surely its godfather.

The evolutionary theorist, best known for his bestseller The Selfish Gene, has dished up the dirt on the Almighty with his latest book The God Delusion. Those who know Dawkins well are used to his combative style and in this work, he pulls no punches. He sets out to demolish the arguments for God’s existence and in his relentless probing, shows himself at his analytical best.

He examines the familiar arguments for God, exposing the illogical flaws and non sequiturs in each case. In one section, he takes apart the idea that we can know God from our scattered personal experiences. If we are to believe these ‘revelations’, he asks, why not accept Peter Sutcliffe’s mad mutterings or those who claim to see pink elephants? It is a thought provoking question.

The creationist movement comes in for a particularly rough ride. The creationists seize on gaps in the fossil record, together with other seemingly ‘improbable’ phenomena, to argue that a designer alone is responsible for nature’s complexities.

Dawkins uses his extensive knowledge of evolution to demolish this reasoning. As he points out, there is an alternative to chance and design, namely the mechanisms of natural selection. Even if science lacks all the answers, he argues convincingly that we would be lazy to assume that God provides a better explanation.

He gives graphic accounts of the most extreme symptoms of fundamentalism, such as the Pakistani lecturer condemned to death for ‘blasphemy’ and the homophobia of America’s Christian extremists. Certainly, these are dreadful abuses of religion but one starts to wonder how balanced this critique really is.

The monotheistic religions have also spawned a magnificent collection of literature; indeed Dawkins describes the Bible as part of our ‘treasured heritage’. For good measure Jesus is lauded as ‘one of the great ethical innovators of history.’ But these grudging admissions are drowned out by a torrent of mud slinging on every other page. By using this tactic, Dawkins has effectively thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

In particular Dawkins ignores the fact that in some religions, you can quite effectively separate the ethics from the theology. Humanistic Judaism offers one such model. Jewish ethics come, not from a deity, but from within the world of Jewish culture and history, with all the stress on upholding good interpersonal behaviour. Without transcendence, the end result may seem watered down but something recognisably Jewish is still there.

The God Delusion is a passionately argued critique of religious belief. If you don’t mind its author’s adversarial style, this book will prove highly rewarding.

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The ramifications of 'diskgate'

23 November, 2007

How Gordon Brown must be revelling in England’s recent football defeat. For a few brief days the tabloids have been having a field day with Steve McLaren’s inept leadership, rather than our inept government. But football comes and goes and, save for the most committed fans, it scarcely matters after a while. If only the same could be said of the latest Whitehall farce.

For what we have witnessed in the last few days is surely the gravest security breach in modern British history with ramifications that could last for decades. The fact that a junior official, with the approval of senior management, could have been given access to the sensitive records of 25 million people, is already cause for concern.

But to think that this information could have been stored on 2 small disks and then been sent through the post without proper security checks, without even being registered or recorded, beggars belief. It is incompetence on the most staggering scale. And this is merely the tip of the iceberg for we know now that security breaches are a regular occurrence, and these are only the ones we are told about. It has also emerged that HMRC managers refused to delete some of the sensitive information due to ‘financial’ reasons. Well their ‘cost cutting’ exercise is going to cost all of us a lot more money.

Any criminal lucky enough to obtain this gold mine of information could spend years indulging in illicit transactions. As Boris Johnson argued yesterday, the government has effectively created a reverse national lottery where the next victim of fraud ‘could be you.’ Who on earth can seriously trust our elected politicians, or our civil servants, to administer an ID card scheme? Who could trust them with securely holding any data or securely administering a database? The government cannot expect to win the argument on ID cards now that this grand cock up has occurred.

Of course it is not just the public sector that breaches our security and data protection conventions. Recent investigations have shown how banks have regularly discarded customers’ sensitive financial information by dumping paperwork outside their offices. Their disregard for personal information is appallingly negligent and cavalier.

Still, we are always told that the public sector knows best and that public servants are inherently virtuous, competent and trustworthy. This is the belief of statists, like Gordon Brown. He thinks the more the state micromanages things, the more the ‘state nanny’ gets her claws into every facet of our lives, the rosier our lives will be. But after the CSA’s appalling failures, the problems with tax credit fraud, the shambles of immigration policy and now ‘Diskgate,’ who could argue that now?

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Nuclear inequivalence

21 November, 2007

Unlike his Iranian counterpart, Ehud Olmert has never called for Iran (or any other country) to be ‘wiped off the map

George Monbiot usually revels in his role as the chief Cassandra of climate change and one of the West’s foremost critics of environmentally unfriendly behaviour. Whatever your views on this topic, his views are often challenging, intelligent and frequently unconventional.

So when I turned to his column in yesterday’s Guardian, I had a slight shock. Far from discussing the latest environmental fad or dismissing the musings of a ‘climate change denier’, he had turned his attention to the complex nuclear politics of the Middle East. Rather disappointingly, his analysis was based, not on new thinking, but on the ‘conventional wisdom,’ which is sadly deficient and immoral.

Here is what he says in a nutshell. He acknowledges that Iran under Ahmadinejad is a ‘dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad’ and that the regime ought not to become a nuclear power. No reason to dissent there, though he discounts the option of military force as ‘disastrous’.

But he follows this up by drawing an analogy with Israel’s behaviour as a member of the nuclear club. ‘Israel under Olmert,’ he says, ‘is also a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad.’ It has refused to sign up to the non proliferation treaty by maintaining a policy of nuclear ambiguity, that is neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons.

What evidence does Monbiot produce that Israel is ‘a dangerous and unpredictable state?’ Here goes: ‘Two months ago it bombed a site in Syria (whose function is fiercely disputed). Last year, it launched a war of aggression against Lebanon. It remains in occupation of Palestinian lands.’ It has also refused to sign up to the International Atomic Energy Agency, thus ensuring that it is not subject to intrusive atomic inspection.

Our governments should, he says, wake up to the fact that Israel ‘presents an existential threat to its neighbours.’ Monbiot concludes: ‘Nuclear weapons in Israel's hands are surely just as dangerous as nuclear weapons in Iran's.’

There are two problems with this rather warped reasoning. The first is Monbiot’s complete lack of historical imagination. Israel was created in the aftermath of the worst genocide in history when one third of world Jewry was turned into ashes. The Holocaust seared itself into the Israeli psyche and induced a unique sense of national vulnerability, a feeling that was only exacerbated by continuous threats of extinction from its Arab neighbours. Israelis must have felt that unless they possessed a deterrent weapon of last resort, they would once again be easy victims for slaughter.

And unlike his Iranian counterpart, Ehud Olmert has never called for Iran (or any other country) to be ‘wiped off the map.’ It certainly possesses the means to do so.

Wose, Monbiot’s analysis clearly questions Israel’s right to defend itself. Israel did not launch a war of aggression against Lebanon. The country was attacked by Hezbollah, an illegally armed militia, when they crossed an internationally recognised border, killing 8 Israeli soldiers and kidnapping 2 more. They followed this with the systematic bombardment of Israel’s northern cities, causing the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people. Israel’s response was not the bombardment of ‘Lebanon’, even of ‘Beirut’ but of those parts of Beirut (and Tyre) in which Hezbollah had established a base and infrastructure. The Israeli response was an act of self defence, pure and simple.

As for the site in Syria, it is now widely believed that the facility attacked by Israeli planes was a nuclear site which had been constructed using North Korean help. The Israelis must have suspected that this nuclear material was destined for Iran or perhaps a rogue group, such as Hezbollah or even Al Qaeda. No rational state could have looked away while an enemy regime was stockpiling the deadliest weapons on earth, with a view to exporting them to Islamist fanatics. The anti Syrian strike was therefore another entirely legitimate act of self defence.

As for ‘acts of terror abroad’, I am not sure what Monbiot was referring to. He may have been thinking of state sponsored targeted assassinations carried out by Israel’s intelligence services. Certainly these are controversial operations that are normally accompanied by considerable soul searching. But are extra judicial killings of terrorists really the same as the Iranian inspired bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed dozens of innocent civilians in 1994? Does he not believe that Israel has any right to defend itself?

I suggest that in future Mr. Monbiot sticks to a field in which he can show off his demonstrable expertise. After all, when it comes to the Middle East, the world already possesses enough useful idiots.

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The Oxford Union's painful suicide

21 November, 2007

Oxford Union President, Luke Tryl, appears to be increasingly isolated after his decision to invite David Irving and Nick Griffin to address the Union. A number of high profile speakers who were due to speak at the Union, including Defence Secretary Des Browne, have now pulled out of their engagements while a student demonstration against Mr. Tryl is reportedly planned for today.

It is hard to know why Mr. Tryl has chosen to alienate people in this way. The big event which Griffin and Irving are due to attend next Monday is titled ‘Free Speech Forum’. It is another sad example of how self indulgent liberals fail to see the harm caused by offering platforms to disreputable figures. President Bollinger made the same mistake last month when he invited President Ahmadinejad to address Columbia University.

Nor is there much sense in inviting these two to address a forum on free speech. After all, neither Irving nor Griffin can reasonably claim to be victims of censorship. There is little to stop either man from addressing fellow believers while both men have uncensored websites.

They publish and distribute books, leaflets and ephemera to all and sundry and so long as they do not break incitement laws, they can speak with impunity. True, Irving was imprisoned in Austria when he knowingly broke Austrian law but Holocaust denial laws do not exist in the UK. As I have previously argued, this is the price we pay (quite rightly) for living in a democracy that values free speech.

But there is a world of difference between not censoring someone (making their expression of free speech a crime) and offering them a respectable platform, such as the Oxford Union. What has either man done to deserve this prestigious treatment? If Mr. Tryl wished to celebrate freedom of speech, why did he not invite Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak to the Oxford Union? She is a brave Muslim dissident whose outspoken criticisms of Islam have forced her to live in exile from her co-religionists.

This rather shameful state of affairs follows hard on the heels of the notorious debate on the two state solution. If you recall, the motion was whether ‘This house believes that One State is the Only Solution to the Israel-Palestine Conflict.’ Those arguing for a one state solution were effectively calling for Israel’s destruction, hence the understandable decision to invite Israeli Academic, Ilan Pappe, to propose the motion.

But among those invited to oppose the motion (and effectively present a case for Zionism and Israel) were Lord Trimble, Norman Finkelstein and Peter Tatchell. I have no problem with Lord Trimble presenting a case for Israel and a two state solution. Tatchell, however, is well known for his stridently pro Palestinian stance while Mr. Finklestein has supported an economic boycott of Israel. These two individuals are the alleged supporters of Zionism and Israel!

One might be tempted to excuse these misjudgements as student whims. After all one might argue, student politics often has a radical, even subversive side.

But this will not do. Oxford University is one of the Western world’s great academic institutions with a justly deserved reputation for intellectual excellence. It is within this context that Mr Tryl’s appallingly ill judged invitation has to be viewed. Even if his decision is reversed under pressure, the damage has been done. The good name of one of the world’s great debating societies has been tarnished, perhaps irreparably.

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Richard Perle tells it like it is

19 November, 2007

Last night I had the pleasure of listening to Richard Perle, the American policy advisor and darling of the Washington neo cons. He was talking about the prospects of an Arab-Israeli peace with particular regard to the forthcoming Annapolis conference.

Echoing the sentiments expressed here a fortnight ago, Perle sounded a note of pessimism about the talks. Abu Mazen was hardly a reliable peace partner. He had done nothing to stop the propagation of anti semitic hatred from mosques, TV stations and classrooms. He remained wedded to the right of return, a formula for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

Iran posed a threat to regional stability with its nuclear ambitions and would use every means possible to scupper a stable Arab-Israeli settlement. The rise of militant Islam, funded by Saudi petro dollars, had created a ubiquitous ideological cancer at the heart of the Arab world that would poison the chances of a negotiated agreement.

Only a democratic Palestinian authority that was not compromised by terror and which accepted the right of a Jewish state to exist in secure borders could, he argued, be a reliable negotiating partner for Israel and the US. This condition has not been met.

Perle made the reasonable point that it would not be in Israel’s interests to give the thumbs down to negotiations per se. But Israelis also had to explain why a positive outcome was unlikely.

All these points, taken separately, were hardly original. But what Perle did was to connect the dots and show how the Israeli-Palestinian problem could not be solved through a territorial settlement. It could not be solved by an injection of cash (the Palestinians have received billions of pounds year on year from the EU since the 1990s) nor by unilateral Israeli concessions. What was required was a radical change of mindset from the Palestinian leadership, a leadership that regarded the interests of Palestinians as paramount.

This is a refreshing analysis seldom heard in Western policy circles. Of course the Palestinians have a whole variety of quite legitimate grievances. They are rightly aggrieved at the expansion of settlements and the inequitable distribution of water in the West Bank. Ordinary Palestinians are hampered by military restrictions which are in place for reasons of necessity but which have a severe impact on daily life. Palestinian moderates yearn for a two state solution which has, at times, been frustrated by more hawkish Israeli leaders.

These issues must be addressed as part of an overall peace settlement. But if the wider underlying cause of tension remains unaddressed, namely the intransigent Palestinian (and Islamist) rejection of Jewish sovereignty, then the chances of peace will recede once again.

All of which leads to the obvious question: If all these difficulties exist, if Mazen is so unreliable and untrustworthy and if Iran’s hegemonistic aspirations are a threat, why are American diplomats straining for this peace settlement? Are they under pressure from the Saudis in return for the House of Saud supporting a move against Ahmadinejad? If it is the latter, perhaps the word ‘Munich’ suggests itself?

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How the Home Office must wish that scandals could ‘migrate’

16 November, 2007

Just when you thought that the Home Office couldn’t get any worse and that this government’s record on immigration had reached its lowest possible level of incompetence, another disgraceful scandal has hit the news.

The revelations that thousands of illegal workers could have been cleared by the Security Industry Authority, a Government agency, to work in Whitehall, in one case to provide protection for the Prime Minister, is deeply alarming. Add to this Jacqui Smith’s refusing to inform Parliament, that is until her hand was forced by the media, and you have a national disgrace. The Home Secretary's unprincipled reticence makes a mockery of the promise to respect Parliament.

The leaked emails revealed by the Daily Mail show that a culture of spin continues to operate at the heart of government, affecting a sadly politicized civil service. Having been informed of this shambles, Smith’s private secretary penned an email on August 9th stating: ‘The Home Secretary has seen your submission of today's date ... She agrees with you that this is not ready for public announcement yet.’

It is likely that Smith also strongly endorsed the view of Peter Edmundson of the Policing Policy and Operations Directorate when he wrote that the presentation of this debacle would ‘not be presented by the media as a positive story.’ Well did he honestly expect that staying silent for months on end would be any better? How long was the Home Secretary going to wait before making an announcement? The following year? The next Parliament? Her memoirs perhaps?

Jacqui Smith claimed that it would have been wrong to make a public announcement before taking action. This is self serving nonsense. Any competent government minister, in full possession of these facts, should have made an immediate statement to Parliament, outlining the information known at the time and the remedial action that was planned.

As things stand, we still don’t know how many illegal workers have been deported or how many are due to be deported. If the numbers are in the hundreds, one can only wonder why so little action has been taken for the last 6 months. The words ‘blunder, panic and cover-up’, offered by David Davis in the Commons, seem an entirely appropriate description of this latest shambles.

But are they not also a perfect description of this government’s immigration policy? When you lose control of a country’s borders, ignore vast numbers of failed immigrants, preside over a control of spin and manipulation and then condemn as racist anyone who dissents, what else do you expect?

Dr. John Reid famously declared that the Home Office was not fit for purpose. After this debacle, the same words must apply to the Home Secretary.

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Hearing opposing views is too much for this Scottish Stalinist

15 November, 2007

Back in September you may recall that our great and wise Prime Minister promised to end ‘ya boo politics.’ He wanted to draw in a range of people of ‘all the talents’ with a new ‘consensus politics’. He wooed his old mate Sir Menzies Campbell (unsuccessfully), happily took in the defector extraordinaire Quentin Davies and achieved a coup by bringing former First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord Alan West, into the government as undersecretary of state for security. Brown’s consensus politics was going to herald a new politics of consultation based on re-engagement with the demos.

But this was all a cynical con trick. As I argued here in September, Brown has never been a consensus politician able to tolerate his opponents’ views. He spent a decade causing havoc at the centre of government in a ruthless bid to reach the top of the greasy pole. He spent that same decade micromanaging the Treasury to such an extent that his methods were labelled ‘Stalinist’.

His government of all the talents was an attempt to neutralise a divided opposition that would otherwise be a potential threat to the Labour party. He was trying to tell people that by being hard on terror and security (with West’s appointment), Tory voters could look on Gordon as a safe pair of hands.

Well for those naïve enough to dispute this, yesterday’s antics provided final proof of what ‘consensus politics’ really means. At 8.20 a.m. he told BBC Radio 4 that he was not yet ‘fully convinced’ about an extension to the 28 day limit of pre charge police detention. The next minute Gordon invited him to No. 10 for tea and a ‘chat’. And guess what, one hour later and before you can say ‘shiver my timbers,’ the venerable Lord was suddenly ‘personally convinced’ that the extension was necessary.

Of course some will defend the idea that in a government, you can’t afford dissenting views. There is indeed much to be said for the collective responsibility of ministers, without which the government machine could not run smoothly. There is also a case for extending the period of pre charge detention though I am inclined to side with Lord West's first observation, namely that this case is yet to be compelling.

But on the issue of extending the period of pre charge detention, many voices have to be heard from all sides of the Commons before a consensus is reached. Surely while this is taking place, the former head of an armed service should be offering ‘independent’ and wise counsel, rather than rubber stamping a prime ministerial whim. This is not a government of all the talents so much as a government of talents who share the views of Gordon Brown. It seems like the Brownite big tent contains some very big holes.

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Hard headed internationalism won't stop genocide

14 November, 2007

Blair was canny enough to realise that when the Security Council failed over Kosovo, only a 'hard headed alliance' would do.

In last week’s Spectator, Rod Liddle argued that politics had become ‘a vapid and meaningless discourse, conducted in a sort of hideous, political correct grammar…an endless glissando of empty nouns.’ An interesting thought and one that crossed my mind as I read Gordon Brown’s recent speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet.

The usual hollow diplomatic niceties were all: ‘interconnectedness’, ‘global concerns,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘interdependence’, ‘openness’ and, for good measure, ‘environmental sustainability.’ But after managing to avoid complete mental torpor by the end of the speech, it was possible to discern the outlines of a Brownite foreign policy, with the main idea summed up in one paragraph:

The old distinction between 'over there' and 'over here' does not make sense of this interdependent world. For there is no longer an 'over there' of terrorism, failed states, poverty, forced migration and environmental degradation and an 'over here' that is insulated or immune. Today a nation's self interest today will be found not in isolation but in cooperation to overcome shared challenges…We cannot escape the consequences of our interdependence.’

Does all this sound vaguely familiar? Take this extract from a speech delivered by one Tony Blair at the 2001 Lord Mayor’s Banquet:

The terrible events of 11 September have made the case for engagement not isolationism as the only serious foreign policy on offer…But one illusion has been shattered on 11 September: that we can have the good life of the West irrespective of the state of the rest of the world…There are few problems from which we remain immune…

Some new vision, Gordon! But party politics aside, it is hard to disagree with the basic point: no modern nation is completely immune to transnational forces, including today’s problem of globalized terror. What happens in the mountain regions of Afghanistan is our concern, not just for humanitarian reasons but because it captures our basic self interest.

Al Qaeda was given safe shelter under the Taleban and it was from that region that their iniquitous plans for mass murder were concocted. Thus our intervention in Afghanistan was given a moral as well as pragmatic legitimacy. Ever the good internationalist, Gordon argued for strengthening the UN as the main agency of intervention by expanding the Security Council, offering more targeted sanctions and funding better peacekeepers. He added, for good measure, that it was good that there were stronger links between EU nations and America.

All good stuff, you feel, until you realise that the basic problem was not addressed: what you do when an organization which is as institutionally paralyzed and morally compromised as the UN fails to deal with a serious political issue.

Brown talked of the ‘gaping hole in our ability to address the illegitimate threats and use of force against innocent peoples.’ He specifically mentioned Rwanda, though he could have added Darfur, the Kurds, Tibetan Monks and Zimbabweans to name but a few. Instead of intervening effectively in these situations, the UN has pursued Israel with singled minded venom and allowed rogue nations onto its diplomatic councils. No amount of mere tinkering will change this.

All of which brings us neatly to Tehran. Brown declared Iran’s nuclear ambitions to be the ‘greatest immediate challenge to non proliferation’ but the only options available were ‘a tightening of sanctions or a transformed relationship with the world.’ He scarcely considered the consequences of the failure of UN sanctions. He did not reveal the alternative (military) options he might consider if sanctions failed. In answer to the question ‘Would Brown support further US led measures against Iran if economic pressure failed’ the best we can offer is ‘Don’t know.’

The omens are not good though. By appointing the anti neo con Marc Malloch Brown to the government, Brown has signalled a distance between himself and the Bush White House. Dropping the phrase ‘war on terror’ is another problem. Some might argue that this is a good thing. But if Brown is serious about tackling rogue states, he must be realistic: where the UN has failed over East Timor, Rwanda, Iraq and Darfur, it will probably fail on Iran too.

There is the difference between this prime minister and his predecessor. Blair was canny enough to realise that when the Security Council failed over Kosovo, only a 'hard headed alliance' would do. This was why his relationship with America was such a strong plank of his foreign policy.

Brown has some tough foreign policy choices to make in the next year or two. Talking the language of internationalism is just the easy bit. Getting problems solved is much harder.

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So Britain is in danger of becoming like Nazi Germany? Pull the other one.

12 November, 2007

So Britain is in danger of becoming like Nazi Germany is it? That is apparently the view of Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain. This outrageous claim was made in an interview with the Telegraph 2 days ago, from which I quote:

"There is a disproportionate amount of discussion surrounding us…The air is thick with suspicion and unease. It is not good for the Muslim community, it is not good for society…Every society has to be really careful so the situation doesn't lead us to a time when people's minds can be poisoned as they were in the 1930s."

As his assistant secretary, Inayat Bunglawala, confirmed later, the analogy he had in mind was with Nazi Germany. Bunglawala said on BBC radio on Saturday: “What you had in the 1930s was all sorts of popular fictions were spread about the Jewish community that they were responsible for all ills that were occurring to Germany." This is not the first time that such an odious, ignorant and offensive comparison has been made. The big champion of PC politics, Ken Livingstone, courted controversy last October by suggesting that the veil debate sparked by Jack Straw’s comments had echoes of the Nazi hounding of Jews in the 1930s.

As a historical point of comparison, both men are talking plain nonsense. Jews in Nazi Germany were hounded out of the teaching profession and sacked from the civil service. Jewish books were burnt in public with the full approval of the government and Jews were then prevented from marrying non Aryans under the Nuremburg laws. They were stripped of citizenship. German Jews bore the full brunt of a full scale political onslaught, resulting in the most odious discrimination, persecution and eventually mass murder. This against an innocent community whose patriotism was unquestioned and whose contributions to German society had been long standing.

Any British politician who proposed such appalling discrimination against British Muslims would instantly light the funeral pyre for their political career. Rightly so. If any such measures were enacted, leading to widespread and officially sanctioned discrimination against the Muslim community, the law would (again rightly) stand up for the Muslim minority.

Of course, the other side of the equation must also be stated. No minority sect within German Jewry sought to take control of German society and rule it on the basis of a puritanical and intolerant interpretation of Jewish law. The idea that Britain may soon turn into a clone of Nazi Germany is simply not credible. 'Even if a‘climate of fear’ existed, it would scarcely produce even a fraction of the evils that beset Germany in the 1930s.

But it actually suits Dr. Bari to spout this pernicious nonsense. Perhaps because it is becoming fashionable to dethrone Jews as the victims of malevolence and replace them instead with Muslims or Palestinians. Muslims are the new Jews, as the saying goes. But Muslims are not the new Jews and Palestinian suffering is not the new Holocaust. But this shameful view finds its place in the MCB’s worldview which is why they have regularly boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day on the spurious grounds that it ignores other massacres. Among the victims of those other massacres are, you guessed it, Palestinians.

Dr. Bari then goes on to spout the usual denial about this even being a ‘religious problem.’

"Terrorists are terrorists, they may use religion but we shouldn't say Muslim terrorists, it stigmatises the whole community. We never called the IRA Catholic terrorists."

Indeed not, because the IRA never labelled themselves as such. Nor would they have wanted to because their conflict was an essentially political one, based on rectifying what they saw as a set of long term historical grievances. Despite the malodorous sectarian feud in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republicans never conceived their battle with the British government in religious terms. This is one reason why those who seek engagement with Hamas on the basis that it worked with Sinn Fein offer a bogus argument.

Today’s Islamist terror threat is a symptom of a jihadist ideology based on an interpretation of Islam which mandates the forcible overthrow of liberal democracy and the enslavement of non Muslims (and moderate non Islamists) to Sharia law. If Dr. Bari thinks that Islamist bombers are not Muslims, he should not be arguing with MI5 and the government. His gripe should be with the terrorists themselves, and millions of Islamist supporters who choose to interpret their faith in such a violent manner.

But because Bari thinks there are no ‘Muslim terrorists’ it follows that it is never legitimate to target anyone within his community. Thus control orders and stop and search operations reflect merely what he calls the police’s ‘institutional racism’ and the solution is to recruit ‘more Muslim police officers.’ Presumably officers who would never arrest other Muslims!

Dr. Bari then goes on condemn Salman Rushdie who, he said, ‘should never have been knighted’. He adds for good measure that The Satanic Verses ‘should have been pulped.’ Yet he thinks that it is wrong to censor or pulp the extremist literature uncovered by the Policy Exchange report. So material that is not just offensive but potentially lethal to non Muslims should not be pulped, yet Rushdie’s writings should be. After reading this interview, I suspect that it is Dr. Bari's double standards, not The Satantic Verses, that should be pulped.

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Thoughts on Remembrance Day

11 November, 2007

Britain simply cannot duck out of the war on terror for it would make this country, and the wider world, far less secure.

Today we remember the countless thousands of British men and women who fell in battle defending their nation – and our freedom. In two world wars, over one million British people paid the ultimate price to achieve victory against 2 powerful and despotic regimes. Thousands more perished in post war conflicts or suffered the scars of injury. It is important that we never forget their sacrifice, courage and sense of duty.

Our armed forces ought to receive the unqualified support of the public and the government. It is depressing then that defence spending is so meagre a portion of government spending. And it is a national disgrace that soldiers are sent to war without proper equipment and with their health and safety jeopardized. The armed forces of this country deserve so much better.

Today we face a deadly but equally determined foe. The global jihad proclaimed by the forces of radical Islam threatens so many parts of our troubled world. From Egypt to Pakistan, from Gaza to Chechnya, the intolerant battle cry of the militants can be heard, with often the most devastating consequences. This is a new type of global conflict that requires a vigorous response, both militarily, economically and intellectually.

Since 9/11, Britain has played a key role in this counter offensive, together with the United States, Australia and others. For many this is a matter of profound regret. But while many (rightly) question the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, this should not obscure the importance of tackling terror, and the ideology that underpins it. Hundreds of Britons have become victims of Islamist attacks, in New York, London, Bali and elsewhere. According to the head of MI5, there are at least 2,000 Muslim extremists under investigation, some as young as 15. Britain simply cannot duck out of the war on terror for it would make this country, and the wider world, far less secure. It would also be deeply dishonourable.

No one should be in any doubt that the war against Islamic militants will be a protracted one. In Afghanistan, the conflict with the Taleban is set to last for decades according to some military figures. Southern Iraq appears relatively stable, though any conflict with Iran might dramatically alter that. Both these conflicts, and others to follow, will exact a heavy toll in British lives.

So on this Remembrance Day, we should salute the bravery of our fellow countrymen who perished in battle. But we must never forget the dedication and professionalism of our current armed forces who are involved in today’s trying engagements. Let us wish them every success in defeating those whose evil machinations threaten our way of life.

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Sir Ian Blair’s credibility is now in tatters

9 November, 2007

By interfering with the IPCC on such a vital issue, he has shown an incredible lack of judgment.

Until two days ago it was possible to argue for Sir Ian Blair remaining in his position. After all, the absurdly named ‘health and safety’ prosecution had not personally implicated Blair himself though it had highlighted the gross operational failures at Stockwell Station.

Serious questions were raised at the High Court. How could a man who was suspected of being a suicide bomber be allowed to board both a train and bus at the risk of killing dozens of people? How could it take so long for a surveillance team so long to arrive at the Stockwell house, allowing people to leave the area before being stopped? Why was no plan put in place in the event that a misidentification occurred?

It now emerges that the firearms officers entering the underground did not even know what the ‘stop’ command meant, adding confusion to an already difficult situation. These and other issues painted an extremely damaging picture of the Metropolitan Police on that fateful day. Yet Sir Ian claimed, with the backing of the Home Secretary and London Mayor, that while he was ‘accountable’ without being ‘responsible.’

Yesterday Sir Ian Blair’s position became untenable following the publication of the IPCC report. It emerged that Blair had personally tried to block the IPCC from investigating the Stockwell shooting, delaying the start of the investigation by 5 days. According to Nick Hardwick, the chairman of the IPCC, ‘…much of the avoidable difficulty the Stockwell incident has caused the Metropolitan Police arose from the delay in referral.’

Yet despite his ‘regrets’ and half hearted apologies, Sir Ian cannot see why he should go. And while this is galling, it speaks volumes that the man capable of removing him from office, namely Gordon Brown, has decided to stand by the embattled Blair. With the Tories and Lib Dems in open revolt, only one political party remains confident in Sir Ian’s leadership, effectively turning this issue into a political row.

Sir Ian Blair would like us to believe that the debate about his position only obscures the greater evil, namely the danger from Muslim suicide bombers. In one sense he is right. A heinous crime was committed on 7th July by four radicalised Muslims while another group attempted a further atrocity 2 weeks later, averted only by their own incompetence. The spectre of mass bombings made the police understandably jittery on the fateful day when Jean Charles was shot. But for Blair to offer this defence now is self serving in the extreme.

Yesterday’s revelations have shown that Sir Ian Blair's credibility is in tatters. By dismissing any suggestion of wrongdoing, he has demonstrated an arrogance that is unworthy of a man in his position. But by interfering with the IPCC on such a vital issue, he has shown an incredible lack of judgment, which is worse. For that reason alone Sir Ian Blair must resign.

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Sure, Enoch’s speech was intemperate. But the left has done so much more to sully the immigration debate.

9 November, 2007

It is the PC multicultural madness that has poisoned this debate more than anything else.

Just mentioning Enoch Powell’s name in the context of immigration is bound to raise emotions to fever pitch. For years he has been the bete noire of the race relations industry and a darling of the racist BNP because of ‘that’ speech in 1968. So it is rather a surprise that Nigel Hastilow, the now ex Conservative parliamentary candidate, invoked Powell in his recent article on immigration. Either he did not expect a hostile reaction from the Conservative party, which suggests ignorance, or he was looking for one, which suggests opportunism.

Hastilow has let up the cry that political correctness has gone mad in this instance. I am not so sure if it is that simple. In my last post, I suggested that Cameron deserved credit for removing race from the immigration debate. By invoking Enoch Powell, Hastilow was, intentionally or otherwise, putting the question of race back into the fray.

In his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Powell quoted one constituent (without apparent criticism) who said that ‘in 15 or 20 years time the black man will have the whip over the white man.’ Powell was opposed to the introduction of anti discrimination legislation that would have benefited incoming Commonwealth immigrants.

He went on to say: ‘To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult.’ Indeed he even argued that the forces opposing integration were one step to allowing immigrants ‘the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population.’ Enoch Powell’s alarmist and inflammatory language made a rational critique of immigration much harder.

et he is not the chief culprit for poisoning the immigration debate. The real danger has come from the ubiquitous influence of multiculturalism, a form of cultural Marxism that has captured the citadels of thought across the Western world.

Multiculturalism is based on cultural relativism, a view that cultures have equal validity and that value judgments about the relative superiority of cultures lack moral validity. But multiculturalism goes beyond an argument about ‘equality of cultures’ to the point of denigrating the (Western) majority cultures. This is because the left, having lost faith with the West for many reasons, has felt unappeasable guilt at the celebration of its greatest achievements: democracy, liberal values, strong nation states and national traditions.

Minority cultures, by contrast, have been portrayed as powerless victims of majority/dominant cultures. Because the majority culture has power, it is seen as oppressive and potentially threatening; therefore promoting is seen as particularly offensive. Hence the familiar relativist quip - ‘Who are we to judge?’

This combination of leftist guilt, multiculturalism and political correctness has had a corrosive effect on the immigration debate. Successive waves of immigrants have not been encouraged to integrate into a ‘majority’ culture because to do so would activate leftist guilt and accusations of Western racism. But without a majority British culture in which to integrate and identify with, immigrants have been encouraged to celebrate their own difference as an end in itself, to form ethnic and cultural ghettos and to maintain their own languages at the expense of the mother tongue. The results have been disastrous, as the misguided champions of multiculturalism (like Trevor Phillips) have recently admitted.

Under the codes of multiculturalism and political correctness, any criticism of immigrants has been seized upon as evidence of xenophobia, racism and a Little Englander mentality. The attempt to question mass immigration since 1997 has usually been met with a torrent of abuse and ad hominem criticism, rather than reasoned argument.

Not everything in Powell’s speech deserves to be condemned. He talked of ‘positive forces acting against integration’ and ‘of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences.’ What is this but a perfectly fair description of the corrosive effects of multiculturalism over the last 30 years? But the mistake made by Powell was to identify the problems of integration through the lens of race. He should have asked questions about culture and values instead.

Like it or not, our national cohesion is being affected by Islamist radicalism among second generation Muslim ‘immigrants.’ While their parents have largely adopted the codes and norms of British life, sections of their offspring have refused.

When the values of a (religious) minority clash with the laws and values of the dominant culture, and when that same determined minority seeks to impose those values on everyone else (which is the Islamists’ ultimate aspiration), you have a recipe for disaster. The values and laws of the dominant culture must win. There is no viable alternative.

It is to the Conservatives’ credit that they have removed race from the immigration equation. Yes, Enoch Powell did make some remarks that were reprehensible and for that he cannot be excused. But to blame this brilliant but flawed character for our current woes would be mistaken. It is the PC multicultural madness that has poisoned this debate more than anything else.top

United in infamy

8 November, 2007

Dan Gillerman, Israel’s permanent representative at the United Nations, yesterday launched a withering attack on the new UN Human Rights Council, calling it a ‘horrendous monster.’ His assessment deserves to be read by all those who still naively believe that the UN retains a shred of credibility. (Read the full statement at: (http://israel-un.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/125301.doc)

‘Since inception, the Council has focused primarily on Israel, subjecting it to 12 discriminatory, one-sided resolutions and three special sessions...The only other specific country situations addressed by the Council were Myanmar and Darfur, the latter where the resolutions on it not only failed to find the Sudanese government culpable for atrocities, but even had the audacity to congratulate Sudan for its cooperation…What has the Council done – if anything – in response to the repeated incitement and calls for Israel’s destruction and denial of the Holocaust by the president of Iran? Nothing. Indeed, the Council’s silence is deafening – eerie and frightening – and, alas, though deeply disappointing, not the least surprising…While the ritualistic and virulent campaign against Israel in the Council is abhorrent and intolerable, equally troubling is the Council’s resulting disregard for serious human rights violations in many other parts of the world, including among its own members… Countless others suffering around the globe, living under tyrannical rule and oppression and violated by human rights abusers, do not gain this Council’s attention. Look around the world at the pain and anguish of these people. Where is the world body’s commitment to human rights, to its sacred Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to the very bodies it created – recreated – in order to protect and ensure the dignity and rights of each and every individual? Yet the Human Rights Council decides to focus on one particular conflict – and for the wrong reason entirely.’

Inspiring stuff. Despite genocide in Darfur, persecution in Burma, China’s oppression of Tibetans, Mugabe’s barbarism, Iran’s execution of teenagers, Saudi Arabia’s stoning of adulterers, North Korea’s slow starvation of millions and countless other egregious human rights abuses, only Israel has suffered opprobrium. Indeed in June of 2006, the Council voted to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. This is an absolute mockery.

Put it this way. The UN is telling Tibetans, Zimbabweans, Chechnyans and others that because it is not the Jewish state oppressing them, they don’t matter in the calculus of morality. But do these people care who oppresses them? They just care that they are being oppressed. This appalling inverse racism belongs to the Alice in Wonderland school of thinking.

In August 2006, the Human Rights Council said it would review human rights violations by Israel in Lebanon but ruled out any scrutiny of Hezbollah’s role in a conflict that it started. The warnings given by NGOs that this would seriously undermine the Council’s credibility were simply dismissed.

In the same year (2006-2007), the UN passed a total of 22 resolutions condemning Israel but not a single one condemning Sudan, despite the appalling genocide in Darfur. A year earlier, the World Health Organization passed one critical resolution: against Israel for violating Palestinian rights to health. No other country was mentioned. Precisely the same thing happened at the International Labour Organization in 2004.

Judging by this selective condemnation, a Martian visiting Earth would be forced to conclude that Israel was, by far, the world’s worst human rights violator. Yet it is a mature, functioning parliamentary democracy with a free press and an independent judiciary that is the envy of the world. Religious and political freedom and the protection of civil rights are built into its constitution.

Certainly there are human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and it would be idle to pretend otherwise. Israel must receive (and expect to receive) some criticism. But the level of criticism should be proportionate to the level of human rights abuses taking place. By singling out Israel in a ferocious campaign of one sided abuse, grossly disproportionate to its actual record, the UN does not allow Israel equality under the law.

But that is hardly the end of it. The next major absurdity with the Human Rights Council is that it has failed to remedy the issue of membership that so beset its predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission. The resolution establishing the Council declared explicitly that "Members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights." This was designed to avoid the situation whereby Libya could be elected Chair of the Commission on Human Rights in 2003.

So who do we find on the Human Rights Council today? Cuba, a Communist dictatorship, Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive regimes on earth, and Pakistan which has just disgracefully suspended its constitution. These regimes have been given the moral right to selectively criticize the Middle East’s only true democracy under pressure from the region’s Muslim nations.

Clearly, the UN does not and will not take human rights seriously. An organization that pretends to care about human rights but which elects repressive regimes for its operations is indeed a ‘horrendous monster.’ It is the institutional equivalent of asking Ian Huntley to oversee children's rights. It is a perversion of all that the UN says it stands for.

To select Israel for attack out of all proportion to its actual record on human rights is worse than illegitimate. It is the organized demonization of the Jewish state. It is politicized anti semitism. Hitler would be laughing in his grave.

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Grooming child terrorists is integral to the Islamist assault on the West

6 November, 2007

Islamism is very similar to fascism and communism. It is founded on a utopian belief in social purity through death and sacrifice.

The revelation that Al Qaeda is grooming children as young as 15 for their apocalyptic programme of militant jihad comes as little surprise. After all, 2 of the July 7th suicide bombers were young men of 18 and 19 who had been radicalised earlier in life. We know from the accounts of former Islamists, such as Ed Hussein, that British universities are being used as recruiting centres by Hizb-ut-Tahrir and other radical groups. Grooming children for terror fits in easily with all this.

In fact if the head of MI5 had visited the Saudi financed King Fahad Academy in London, he would have had an even bigger shock. According to the recent Policy Exchange report, this school used textbooks that promoted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti semitic forgery that purports to prove a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to control the world.

Saudi financed texts describe the Protocols as “indisputable truth” and accuse Jews of “trying to immerse nations in vice”. Another book released by the Saudi Prophetic Tradition and Islamic Culture described Jews as “a people who were moulded with treachery and backstabbing throughout the centuries”.

Earlier this year a former teacher at the school claimed that children were using textbooks that described Jews as ‘repugnant’ and Christians as ‘pigs.’ Students, he said, were ‘asked to “mention some repugnant characteristics of Jews", and Year 1 pupils asked to "give examples of worthless religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, idol worship and others.”’ (Daily Telegraph 7th February 2007)

Incidentally, Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the MCB, dismissed the Public Policy report as ‘shrill hysteria’. Can you imagine the outcry if a report found Christian faith schools using texts that maligned the character of Muslims, or that asked children aged 6 to ‘mention some repugnant characteristics of Muslims?’ Or the outcry if Rowan Williams dismissed such a report as ‘shrill hysteria?’

Noxious child abuse is very much a feature of radical Islam’s campaign against the West. I am not thinking about female genital mutilation, forced marriages or the Iranian regime’s execution of teenage criminals, though these things are disgraceful. I am thinking more about the young Iranian children, the Basij movement, who were sent onto the battlefield to clear mines during the Iran-Iraq war. These children had keys hung round their necks in order to ensure that, post mutilation, they would enter paradise as martyrs in a holy war. I am thinking of Hezbollah’s use of children as human shields during the Lebanon war. I am especially thinking about the dissemination of jihadist propaganda to a generation of young Muslims.

The most graphic example of this latter phenomenon comes from the Palestinian territories. For years, Palestinian media stations have celebrated violent jihad as a religious duty and the true path to paradise. Videos, aimed at young children, regularly celebrate the ‘martyrdom’ of suicide bombers and call on children to expel the ‘infidel’ Jew from their land. Jews are regularly denounced as the ‘sons of pigs and dogs,’ an increasingly common reference in the Middle East today. (To see a particularly virulent example of this, see the following video: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEB0SvMzKzg)

According to a Palestine Media Watch report on Palestinian school textbooks (produced in 2007 and available to download from www.pmw.org):

‘The new PA schoolbooks teach and idealize Jihad – war for Islam – and Shahada – death for Allah – as basic Islamic principles to which to aspire. Jihad and Shahada are at times taught as general Islamic ideals, and at times focused against Israel. This promotion is not limited to the formal Islamic education books, but is found in many different schoolbooks. Often the original Islamic sources from the Quran or Hadith are used as the tool of promotion.’ (p. 19 of the report) One quote is particularly instructive: "Palestine will be liberated by its men, its women, its young ones and its elderly.” Clearly no person can be spared from battle because of their age.

The Palestinian Authority and Al Qaeda have clearly taken lessons from Nazi Germany. The Hitler Youth became one of the prime means for disseminating the Nazis’ racist world view. Young children identified the Jews through perverted and graphic images that played on ancient stereotypes. Jews were seen as hook-nosed sexual predators intent on global domination, a species of subhumanity whose malevolence had diluted the ancient purity of the German nation.

Today, many Muslim children imbibe identical images and messages. They are being taught that the Western powers, principally the ‘infidel’ Jew, are engaged in a battle to destroy the soul of Islam, a disaster that only militant jihad can avert. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Western intervention in the Middle East, there is no doubt that Islamist propaganda is using the basest imagery to depict its enemies.

In the Islamist world view, children’s lives do not matter because human life does not matter. Children are the cannon fodder on which the dreams of the future are to be constructed. Islamism is very similar to fascism and communism. It is founded on a utopian belief in social purity through death and sacrifice.The average Western liberal finds it very hard to come to terms with this, and to understand why Islamism and child sacrifice go hand in hand.

Two words aptly describe this process of preying on the young and vulnerable. They are ‘child abuse.’

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This immigration debate is not about race

5 November, 2007

The last few weeks has seen a welcome renaissance for the Tories. Instead of hugging hoodies, druggies and Pollys (of the Toynbee variety), they have now opted for the safer territory of small government, low taxes and controlled immigration. This latter issue is now receiving the greatest attention.

David Cameron’s speech on immigration last week was both balanced and sensible. Instead of Gordon Brown’s rabble rousing rhetoric (‘British jobs for British workers’), Cameron offered a dignified and measured assessment of the impact of immigration on Britain. He rightly pointed out that in a ‘modern dynamic and open economy’ there would be high figures for ‘emigration and immigration.’

But what alarmed him was a decade of immigration ‘at a speed and scale…rarely seen before.’ He reached this conclusion: ‘Unsustainable demographic change makes it harder to build the opportunity society I want to see, where young people can get on the housing ladder and where everyone has more power over their own lives...’

As much of the projected demographic increase would stem from immigration, there was a need for ‘annual limits on non-EU economic migration’ as well as a proper border police force, equipped with powers to stop illegal immigration. Most of this is what we could call concentrated common sense.

The government’s own estimates of population increase have been startling, showing a projected increase of 10 million people in Britain by 2031. The vast increase in immigration since 1997 has come at a social cost, a point that Cameron was at great pains to prove. Immense pressure has been put on public services; on the transport infrastructure, on housing, on schools, on hospitals, on councils and on policing. This can only worsen considerably if current immigration levels are sustained.

Yet from the adverse reaction, you’d imagine that the Tories had just elected Alf Garnett as the shadow minister for race relations. Last week, BBC Liberals John Humphries and Andrew Marr played the ‘race card’, the latter accusing George Osborne (on Sunday AM) of wanting to put a cap on black and brown migrants. Needless to say, this bilious slur has been repeated in other quarters.

The Conservatives were not calling for racial quotas, an idea that would be at once reprehensible and ill advised. This issue is about economics, not ethnicity. Hence the (justifiable) outcry when a prospective Parliamentary candidate was dismissed for expressing support for Enoch Powell. Indeed when deciding numbers, what ought to matter is not the r word at all but the s one: skills. It is here that race can be removed from the equation altogether.

It is a truism that every country produces both high skilled and low skilled workers. High skilled migrants can bring a wealth of entrepreneurial and educational skills and fill important gaps in the economy. But the migration of low skilled workers is only likely to depress wages and job opportunities for the indigenous working class, as numerous studies have testified. Britain needs to prioritise the migration of high skilled non EU workers, rather than those who are lower skilled.

But what about the plumbers, cleaners and sweepers doing the jobs that no one else will do? Isn’t this always given as the ultimate justification for low skilled immigration? It is a fair point, until that is you consider that Britain has a mass army of unemployed and economically inactive citizens. This includes nearly one million NEETS, those people not in employment, education or training. These people need to be urgently retrained to do these low skilled jobs, or told them they have to do them. If they refuse, while they are physically able to work, their benefits should be cut.

David Cameron has indeed created a stir by promising to tackle Britain’s culture of welfare and benefit dependency. (More in a later post). But if this radical programme is to get off the ground, he has to consider the effect of low skilled migration – and do something about it. Tackling immigration will reduce public anxiety about numbers, while enabling welfare reform to take place. If it succeeds, Britain’s social security budget can be slashed, getting more people back to work and enabling substantial tax reductions to be made.

Cameron is seizing the initiative from Gordon Brown and producing the contours of a radical and exciting Tory project. He needs the courage to see it through.

Footnote: (from the Independent's leader today) 'The Tory leader needs again to make it clear that...he sees a clear distinction between a responsible debate on a subject of national interest and a return to the kind of poisonous and inflammable language that Powell injected into the issue.' Sums it up.

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And now the Muslim Council of Britain responds

2 November, 2007

Not all fundamentalists are the same. Some pose an imminent threat to public safety and it is they, and they alone, who merit the closest scrutiny.

Just in case you were unsure how the Muslim Council of Britain would respond to the Policy Exchange report (discussed in the previous post), Inayat Bunglawala, its Deputy Chairman, gave his response yesterday on the Guardian website. Acknowledging that many of the passages in Saudi books and pamphlets were ‘not for the faint hearted’ and could be regarded as ‘very unpleasant’, Mr Bunglawala added that he saw ‘no suggestion’ that they actually broke ‘any of our laws.’ In a robust democracy, he said, extremist literature had to be tolerated and challenged, rather than be censored. Mr. Bunglawala posed the following questions:

‘Who does Policy Exchange suggest will decide what is "unacceptable" literature? Is there to be a list of "prohibited books" that should be drawn up, and if so, by whom? Who will enforce it? And will only Muslim bookshops be policed or all bookshops?’

Mr. Bunglawala’s questions should not go unchallenged because they go to the heart of the debate about the limits of free speech. I will therefore attempt some answers.

The mosques themselves ought to act as moral censors and decide whether the literature in question violates their interpretation of Islam. We are always told that the majority of imams are moderate, tolerant and inclusive; in other words, that they do not deserve to be called extremists. If so, they should quickly reach the correct conclusion about whether this hate material deserves to be paraded in mosques. Literature that impugns the character of Jews (and which praises the anti semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and calls for gay people to be executed is clearly not moderate. But if mosques do not remove extremist material and refuse to get their house in order, the police should step in instead. Books which infringe the law by inciting hatred and violence should be removed, period.

Now all this may all sound a touch draconian, a kind of soft totalitarianism by the back door. Mr. Bunglawala certainly believes so because he argues that censorship would make Great Britain morally equivalent to the Islamists.

‘The danger with the "reds under the bed" approach that tired right-wing outfits like Policy Exchange routinely adopt is that the logical conclusion of all the measures they propose are, on closer inspection, every bit as frightening as what they claim to be speaking out against.’

He goes on to remind us of ‘how the government of Saudi Arabia decides which books and magazines are "approved" for reading and which are not,’ as if to ward us off from copying such illiberal measures.

But this is dangerous frivolity. One of the main books proscribed in Saudi Arabia is the Bible, as Christians who have been imprisoned for practising their faith will readily tell you. But an open and democratic society that wishes to proscribe this lethal brand of Islamist intolerance is not in a morally equivalent position to a backward state prohibiting religious freedom.

The litmus test of censorship is not whether a viewpoint is offensive. A robust, democratic society must tolerate, both in law and in practice, any views which are deemed to be offensive. That is why the Science Museum was wrong to deny a platform to James Watson, and why Patrick Mercer should not have been expelled from the Shadow Government. No, the litmus test is whether a person’s speech is likely to incite violence or hatred against another person or group. In other words, whether the exercise of your right to free expression infringes my right not to suffer its harmful consequences. Freedom is never an absolute.

The question we have to ask is whether the literature uncovered in the Policy Review investigation fails the litmus test mentioned above. Given the vast numbers of terrorist recruits who have been immersed in Islamism’s literary hate fest, I think the answer here is fairly clear cut. Some may disagree. But they have to ask the right questions first.

The last of Bunglawala’s questions (‘Will only Muslim bookshops be policed or all bookshops?’) is the most revealing of all. The politically correct response to Islamist terrorism is to deny that it is an ‘Islamic’ problem. Every faith has fundamentalists after all, so why pick on Muslims?

Yet singling out mosques in this way is not discriminatory, at least in the sense of unfair or irrational discrimination. Churches and synagogues do not promote books, videos and pamphlets calling for gays and ‘apostates’ to be executed, and for Western democracy to be destroyed. It takes a peculiar kind of moral blindness not to see that. Naturally the Judaeo-Christian tradition will offend atheists, gays and liberals in its vigorous attack on Western lifestyles. But these ‘offensive’ ideas can generally be challenged in the marketplace of ideas.

Not all fundamentalists are the same. Some pose an imminent threat to public safety and it is they, and they alone, who merit the closest scrutiny.

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November Entries

• Forget imperialism, Archbishop. Think of your suffering flock.
• The Oxford Union finally commits suicide
• Being good without god: A brief review of ‘The God Delusion’
• The ramifications of 'diskgate'
• Nuclear inequivalence
• The Oxford Union's painful suicide
• Richard Perle tells it like it is
• How the Home Office must wish that scandals could ‘migrate’
• Hearing opposing views is too much for this Scottish Stalinist
• Hard headed internationalism won't stop genocide
• So Britain is in danger of becoming like Nazi Germany? Pull the other one.
• Thoughts on Remembrance Day
• Sir Ian Blair’s credibility is now in tatters
• Sure, Enoch’s speech was intemperate. But the left has done so much more to sully the immigration debate.
• United in infamy
• Grooming child terrorists is integral to the Islamist assault on the West
• This immigration debate is not about race
• And now the Muslim Council of Britain responds

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