Archive for June, 2006
Are EU People Being Served or Serfed by EU Governments?
Posted by David Conway in European Union on 07/06/2006
Three excellent articles have recently appeared on the internet about the problems Europe is facing as a result of disastrous policies that various European governments have adopted, including the ever-growing supra-national one in Brussels, in response to the huge influx of Muslim immigrants to this region in recent years.
The first is by Flemming Rose entitled ‘Europe’s Politics of Victimology’ . In it, the culture editor of Jyllands Posten explains the motivation of his paper in publishing last September the notorious set of cartoons of the prophet Muhammed that were eventually to unleash such a storm of Muslim protest at them around the world.
‘By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon’, explains Rose, he was — rather than intending to insult Danish Muslims or the founder of their religion — ‘sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion; an act of respect and recognition.’
By declining the invitation, the outraged Danish imams who stirred up Muslim protests at the cartoons were declining inclusion – other than on their own terms which were to make non-Muslims mountains come to Muhammed.
Lost in Translation
Posted by David Conway in Religion on 05/06/2006
It has recently been announced that Sir Iqbal Sacranie is to step down as head of the Muslim Council of Britain in favour of his deputy, Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari.
A BBC news profile of Dr Bari informs us that he is chairman of the East London Mosque, as well as a specialist teacher in London’s Tower Hamlet for something the web-site terms ‘behaviour support’ and for which, it further reports, Dr Bari received an MBE in 2003.
According to this profile of him, at last year’s general election, Dr Bari, in his capacity as chairman of the London Mosque, helped to secure a healthy turnout of the Muslim vote in London’s East End by informing its attendees they had a duty to vote.
It would be tempting, although doubtless mistaken, to think that part of Dr Bair’s remit as a teacher of ‘behaviour support’ involved this call to active citizenship.
To think this of what falls under Dr Bari’s remit as a teacher of ‘behaviour support’, would doubtless be mistaken, however tempting, since it was precisely the large Muslim turnout his intervention is reported to have helped secure that was responsible for the return to parliament of George Galloway and his notorious ‘Respect’ party, hardly a good day for parliamentary democracy.