Islamophobia

The Daily Toast: Alex Massie Calls Out Britain’s Growing Illiberal Streak

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Ban Donald Trump Petition

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The pathetic petition to ban Donald Trump from entering Britain – for the high crime of being an idiot – reveals a festering illiberal sickness at the heart of our nation

Are we really that country? Are we really that petty, authoritarian, second rate destination that bans foreigners whom we accuse of endangering the “health and morals of the nation”?

Yes. Increasingly, regrettably, yes we are. Donald Trump will escape the travel ban which many on the virtue-signalling Left are desperate to impose by virtue of who he is, the fact that he has no plans to come here anyway, and the diplomatic impossibility of thus spurning a US presidential candidate, even an unlikely one. But others before him have not escaped Britain’s growing intolerance of intolerance.

Comedians such as Dieudonné M’bala M’bala have been banned from visiting Britain to perform their racist comedy routines. Bloggers like Pamela Geller have been banned from entering the UK because their pungent and unpleasant political views have been deemed to be “not conducive to the public good”.

So we are already that country, no matter whether or not Theresa May decides to put Donald Trump’s name on her little list. We are already that country which has lost so much faith in our British, Western and democratic values that we now see unpleasant or inflammatory speech as something which will harm our already-fragile society.

The wretched story even made it to Prime Minister’s Questions. The fevered ramblings of that reality TV star turned presidential candidate were actually raised by an MP in the House of Commons, and George Osborne (standing in for David Cameron) was asked to intervene to protect us from the Big Bad Man. Serious journalists debated whether or not a ban was appropriate, when they could have been writing about something, anything else.

There’s certainly nothing like a swaggering, ignorant Republican presidential candidate to bring out the angry, authoritarian cheerleader in Dan Hodges:

What we have just witnessed is not just another attention-seeking rant from a Republican hopeful who is trying to secure definition in a crowded primary field. What Trump has done is effectively call for a race war.

[..] One of the most popular TV shows in the US at the moment is an alternative history drama called The Man In The High Castle. It is set in a world in which the Allies lost the second world war, and America lives under a fascist dictatorship.

Donald Trump wants to be the man in the high castle. Ban him. Ban him now.

But this is far from an uncommon reaction. The Independent earnestly argued exactly the same point – that Donald Trump’s views were not simply factually incorrect and misguided views to be challenged and debated, but potentially “harmful” words of such power that their speaker must be forcibly kept at bay and prevented from corrupting the impressionable minds of the British public.

Fortunately, there are dissenters. This blog weighed in when the Donald Trump story first broke, making the case that the illiberal instincts of the outraged Left are just as harmful as the nonsense spouted by Trump.

And now Alex Massie has an excellent piece in CapX, taking square aim at the “fatheaded nincompoops” more interested in signalling their virtue and parading their ignorance of the free society than defeating the actual ideas espoused by Trump.

Massie writes, sarcastically:

If we ban something, you see, that something will disappear. Even better, by banning ugly speech we will be able to demonstrate our moral superiority. And, when push comes to shove, that’s what matters most. Smugness warms the soul like nothing else this winter and every place must be a “safe space”.

And so it is. Imprisoned by the dogmatic belief that all cultures and values are inherently equal, none superior to any other, all that some parts of the Left can now do is squeal with protest when anyone does anything to hurt someone else’s feelings.

Massie continues, making reference to the parallel “controversy” surrounding champion boxer Tyson Fury whose nomination for Sports Personality of the Year is causing hysteria because of his unreconstructed views on gender roles and sexuality:

Repeat after me: there is no right not to be offended. But if we must be outraged let us be more outraged by those who seek to stymy and prohibit speech than by those whose speech the censors would have us suppress.

I deplore Donald Trump and have little admiration for the cut of Tyson Fury’s jib but, damn it, I’ll defend their right to be objectionable – and even repellent – if the alternative is siding with those who instinctively react to disagreeable opinions by seeking to suppress them. These people pose a vastly greater threat to liberalism and public decency than the people they deplore themselves.

These arguments over Trump and Fury might seem trivial but they are minor manifestations of a much larger issue. Remember January? Remember “Charlie Hebdo”? Remember all the pious declarations of sympathy and support and solidarity? Remember how politicians discovered that free speech might actually be something worth defending? Remember “Je suis Charlie”?

[..] Trump and Fury do not, in themselves, matter very much. But the reaction to their speech does matter. It is always depressing to discover that there are vastly fewer liberals in this country than you might wish there to be. But that discovery should no longer surprise us.

One can hope that the growing number of signatories to the Ban Donald Trump petition are drawn entirely from the ranks of virtue-signalling left-wing keyboard warriors, and are thus entirely unrepresentative of the British people as a whole.

One can tenuously hope that some of those who say that they want to ban Donald Trump are simply registering their strong disagreement with his latest inflammatory comments, and that they don’t really mean it when they call for a person to be banned from entering this country on account of their political views

One can even hope that the angry petitioners are outnumbered by a greater silent majority of Britons who don’t see Britain’s current, shameful track record of banning controversial people from entering our country as a marvellous precedent which should be extended to Donald Trump, simply because he’s an exceedingly offensive ass.

One can hope.

But I’m not sure any more. Perhaps it’s entirely a function of following the daily news cycle too closely and attaching too much weight to the petty storms and crusades of social media. Perhaps Britain isn’t really becoming a more sanctimoniously self-satisfied and intolerant place, populated by beady-eyed, brittle-egoed adult babies whose first reaction to encountering dissenting or unpleasant opinions is to screech indignantly for the authorities to have them banned.

Perhaps.

But it’s hard to feel much hope after reading much of the Donald Trump coverage in Britain over the past couple of days.

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From next week, I’ll be in Texas and Ireland to celebrate Christmas and the New Year respectively. Blog updates will continue, but at a reduced frequency until normal service resumes in January.

Many thanks to everyone for reading, sharing, commenting, debating and contributing.

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The Left’s Donald Trump Syndrome Is Worse Than The Man Himself

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Donald Trump - Muslims - Islamophobia

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Donald Trump’s derisive comments about London and his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States are idiotic and hugely illiberal. But the self-righteous backlash from parts of the Left is just as bad

American politicians – especially wannabe presidential candidates – insult London at their peril.

Mitt Romney found that out the hard way back in 2012, after his off-the-cuff comments about the London Olympic Games preparations earned the ire of the British public and a personal rebuke from David Cameron.

But current Republican presidential candidate (and, depressingly, frontrunner) Donald Trump managed to make Mitt Romney’s gaffe-prone diplomacy look like a veritable charm offensive with a two-pronged effort to capture the news cycle which saw Trump first suggest that the US implement a complete ban on Muslims entering the country, and then insult America’s closest ally by suggesting that whole swathes of London are so full of Islamist extremists that the police do not enter them for fear of their lives.

From the New York Times:

Donald J. Trump called on Monday for the United States to bar all Muslims from entering the country until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on” after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., an extraordinary escalation of rhetoric aimed at voters’ fears about members of the Islamic faith.

A prohibition of Muslims – an unprecedented proposal by a leading American presidential candidate, and an idea more typically associated with hate groups – reflects a progression of mistrust that is rooted in ideology as much as politics.

Mr. Trump, who in September declared “I love the Muslims,” turned sharply against them after the Paris terrorist attacks, calling for a database to track Muslims in America and repeating discredited rumors that thousands of Muslims celebrated in New Jersey on 9/11. His poll numbers rose largely as a result, until a setback in Iowa on Monday morning. Hours later Mr. Trump called for the ban, fitting his pattern of making stunning comments when his lead in the Republican presidential field appears in jeopardy.

And the Guardian:

In a bid to justify his controversial comments that Muslims should be barred from entering the US, Trump had said parts of London and Paris were so “radicalised” – seemingly a reference to Islamist extremism being rife – that police officers were scared.

“Paris is no longer the safe city it was. They have sections in Paris that are radicalised, where the police refuse to go there. They’re petrified. The police refuse to go in there,” he told MSNBC, refusing to name specific neighbourhoods in the city.

He added: “We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised that the police are afraid for their own lives. We have to be very smart and very vigilant.”

It really isn’t necessary to counter either Donald Trump’s back-of-a-napkin immigration policy, his supremely un-American idea for a religious test in order to enter the United States or his uninformed comments about the city which some years ago overtook New York and Paris as the world capital for finance and tourism respectively. We’ll take it as a given that every thinking person can recognise these comments as the unfiltered bilge that they are.

Of far more concern are the growing hordes of MPs, commentators and members of the public calling for Donald Trump to be banned from ever entering the UK on the grounds of “hate speech”.

The inevitable online petition is already circulating and picking up names, reports the Huffington Post:

An online petition calls on U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May to bar the Republican presidential frontrunner from entering the country for allegedly violating the nation’s hate-speech laws. 

If it receives 100,000 signatures, the petition could be taken up for debate in the House of Commons, according to The Independent. 

The petition launched by Scottish resident and longtime Trump critic Suzanne Kelly blasts Trump for “unrepentant hate speech and unacceptable behavior” that “foments racial, religious and nationalistic intolerance which should not be welcome in the U.K.”

While Sunder Katwala sets out the illiberal case over at British Future:

It is important that the UK Government makes very clear that this extreme view is rejected and repudiated in the strongest possible terms.

The UK Home Office has set out clear guidelines which have led to the exclusion of preachers of hate from the UK if their presence here would not be conducive to the public good. Theresa May has excluded extreme Islamists on these grounds, and also kept out those who have fanned extreme anti-Muslim prejudice, such as the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Trump’s statements are more extreme than theirs.

Unless and until Trump were to retract these highly prejudiced comments, there is a good case for making clear that he would be refused entry to the UK by the Home Secretary.

No. It is only “important” that the UK government does anything at all about this wretched circus act if you take the view that it is the proper role of government to be a watchful, overprotective parent who oversees everything that we do, say or hear, supposedly for our own good.

It’s only “important” if you take such a dim view of the intelligence of the British people that you believe – like a Victorian prude – that the health and morals of the nation are somehow at stake, and that general public might be inspired to commit racist or Islamophobic deeds either at the mere sound of Trump’s words or at the sight of his ridiculous hairdo.

Such a view is as nonsensical as it is insulting. Why on earth should the UK government care what a reality TV star turned presidential candidate says, and why can’t the British people be trusted to hear what he has to say and judge the merits (or the idiocy) for themselves? Besides, either Trump’s candidacy remains a complete joke, in which case illiberal UK government censorship would be a massive overreaction, or he is a viable contender – in which case the UK needs to remain neutral while our closest ally chooses their next leader.

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Donald Trump didn’t cover himself in any glory with his latest comments on Islam and London. But who expected anything more of him? For all his natural gift as a TV personality, Trump is a blowhard, anti-intellectual populist of the worst sort – a man who is fundamentally incurious but convinced that he has the right answer for everything (usually involving “winning” a trade war with China).

And to be sure, Trump’s latest remarks disqualify him as a serious candidate for the presidency, if the ten previous outrage-baiting comments had not already done so. In many ways, this is Trump’s “choosing Sarah Palin” moment – the action which finally doomed his candidacy, much like John McCain’s desperate and opportunistic pick for a vice presidential candidate back in 2008.

But the Left supposedly hold themselves to a higher standard. And yet in response to Trump’s inflammatory words we have seen such a parade of ostentatious outrage and cheap virtue-signalling that one could almost be forgiven for forgetting that the Left are in no small part responsible for the rise of Trump in the first place, as Douglas Murray devastatingly explains in The Spectator:

When the political left refuses to identify where Islamic terrorism comes from, what drives it or what it can even be called, it leaves the ground wholly open for anyone else to do or say anything they want.  Far from being blunt tools or broad brushstrokes, referring to ‘Islamic extremism’ or ‘Islamism’ makes an obvious and conscious effort to put down a delineating line between non-extreme Muslims and the extremists from their faith.  Yet many Muslim organisations, among others, reject this.

[..] But what people seem slow to realise is that suppressing legitimate concerns and decent discussion inevitably leads to people addressing the same things indecently.  We can thank the American left for the creation of Donald Trump and we can thank them for his comments last night.  For years the left made the cost of entering this discussion too high, so too few people were left willing to discuss the finer points of immigration, asylum or counter-terrorism policy and eventually the only release valve for peoples’ legitimate concerns is someone saying – wrongly in my view – ‘keep them all out.’

Yes, of course Donald Trump’s comments are reprehensible. But the answer is not to parade our outrage on social media, as though engaging in a competition to be more publicly offended by Trump’s words is a meaningful substitute for real activism. And nor is the answer to ban Donald Trump from coming to these shores, thus denying Boris Johnson and thousands of eager Londoners the opportunity to prove him wrong about our city – and Trump himself from receiving this much needed education.

Outrage on Twitter is nothing more than empty virtue-signalling, whilst indignant calls for Trump to be banned from entering the UK are every bit as illiberal as Trump’s own proposal to set a religious test for entry into the United States.

Donald Trump’s opponents believe that they are better than the business mogul, reality TV star and presidential candidate. If so – if they are all simply better, more enlightened people, a belief they make little effort to hide – they have a funny way of showing it.

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Outlawing “Islamophobia” – The Folly Of Hate Crime Laws

Guest Contributor1 Comment

Hate Crime Laws - Islamophobia - Labour Party - Ed Miliband - South Park

 

By Ben Kelly, blogger and editor of The Sceptic Isle.

According to Muslim News, Ed Miliband has promised to make “Islamophobia” illegal: 

“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime […]We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country,” Ed allegedly told the editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J. Versi.

Now, I cannot be certain as to the veracity of this statement nor the accuracy of the quotations. I am not certain of the integrity or quality of The Muslim News so I am assessing this with some scepticism while using it as a starting point to discuss a broader theme.

For me, whether Ed Miliband really intends this or not, it is a reminder of the essentially morally corrupt nature of the concept of hate crime. Is it healthy that Muslims should rejoice that they will be recognised by a law identifying them as a separate group, worthy of a special law, to gain parity with Jews and homosexuals? I would contend that it would be better for the social fabric of our society that their sense of separation be eroded rather than made official by law.

Hate crime is identity politics in legislative form, it erodes the principles that uphold the common law; that all are equal before it, it is the law of the land and applies to all, rich, poor, black, white, Muslim, Christian, the government and the governed. Hate crime is divisive because it creates further barriers and aggravates the sense of otherness that minority groups feel.

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A Black Flag Flies In London, Revealing A Schism In Britain

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Will Crooks Estate Flag London

 

A black flag was flown from the gates of an east London housing estate, and an entire neighbourhood was effectively declared last week not only to be in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the cause of Palestinian statehood, but – contrary to any available evidence or the residents’ consent – to also be united in a shared, extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith.

As the Guardian reported at the time:

The flag bears similar writing to the jihadi flags that have been flown by the extremist group in Iraq and other jihadi groups since the 1990s. When the estate was approached last night, a group of about 20 Asian youths swore at Guardian journalists and told them to leave the area immediately. One youth threatened to smash a camera.

When a passerby tried to take a picture of the flag on a phone, one of the gang asked him if he was Jewish. The passerby replied: “Would it make a difference?” The youth said: “Yes, it fucking would.” Asked if the flag was an Isis flag, one local man said: “It is just the flag of Allah.” But another man asked: “So what if it is?”

Should the black flag be banned from the streets, as it is in some European countries such as the Netherlands? Absolutely not – the right to free speech and freedom of expression is one area where it is actually right to take a maximalist, uncompromising stance despite the difficulties and tensions that it may cause.

Banning the black flag, despite its similarities to the jihadi flags flown by ISIS, is not the right move. If a private individual wishes to mark themselves out in public as a ideologically extremist bigot with pro-terrorism sympathies, that should be their protected right. But the flag had no place being flown on council-owned housing property as though it spoke for all of the residents when it did not, and so it was right that the flag was removed by Sister Christine Frost, a Roman Catholic nun and local community activist.

Douglas Murray summed up the most appropriate reaction to the provocation at the time in The Spectator, explaining in stark terms the gravity of the fact that some British Muslims chose to proudly display a flag of this type in London, so far removed from the various conflicts:

When historians look back on Europe in this era, they will rub their eyes in disbelief. ISIS is carrying out actual genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing on the people of Syria and Iraq. Their exact ideological soul-mates in Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are doing everything they can to set light to the same region. Right now the western states are finally talking of intervening in Iraq to stop ISIS wiping out the ancient Yazidi and Christians communities of Iraq. Yet we do nothing to stop the same murderous ideology thriving here.

Instead another pattern is set. When we see this disgusting ideology at work, as we have done for the last month, much of Europe turns its hatred onto the Saturday people for defending themselves. Israel continues to defend itself. And we may do something to hold back ISIS in Iraq. But what will we do in our societies when we finally realise that behind the flag of Hamas is the black flag of jihad, and that after failing to stand up for the Saturday people there will be fewer people left to stand up for the Sunday people?

Most importantly, what will we do when we wake up to the fact that, far from being in some neighbouring or far-flung country, we have allowed the enemy to plant itself deep inside our own countries?

But perhaps predictably, LondonLive is now reporting that the same young people who raised the flag over a housing estate in east London are complaining that the flag’s very removal is a sign of racism and Islamophibia:

A controversial black flag flown above the gates of an east London council estate is being defended by young Muslims.

The flag – which has been linked to some jihadist groups – has been removed twice by a concerned nun and police officers. 

But youths at the Will Crooks estate in Poplar have today said assumptions that the flag is linked to extremist groups is ‘racist’. 

One youth said: “It’s just racists complaining. If it was the St George’s flag, it would be alright. But this is our version and there’s this big reaction.”

More than the fact that the flag was raised in the first place by one or two deluded hotheads, it is the fact that the flag was then defended by other, supposedly representative local youths, that should give everyone the greatest cause for concern.

Here, in the young peoples’ protest, is the whole problem in a nutshell, the root of the problem with Islamic extremism in Britain. It’s the regrettable attitude by some Muslims that proclaims “You may be English, but we’re Muslim”. It’s the stubborn belief among its adherents that they are Muslims who just happen to live in Britain, rather than British people who happen to follow the religion of Islam. And yes, it’s the craven support from some appeasers on the left, who overlook or excuse the lack of  integration with British society, and echo their accusations of Islamophobia and racism directed at anyone who argues for greater cultural assimilation and the embracing of British values.

The fact that the go-to defence offered up by the local youths was a comparison with the St George’s Flag, one of the home nation flags of the United Kingdom, reveals the height of the mountain that must be overcome. The St George’s Flag belongs just as much to the angry Muslim youths in the Will Crooks housing estate as it does to anyone else in England, but they choose to reject it in favour of a religious flag, despite the fact that their chosen standard has a violent, gory recent history.

In modern Britain (with the partial exception of Northern Ireland, where sectarianism and flags are still linked with intolerance and violence), one’s religion and faith is not demarcated with a flag. Indeed, religion and national identity or patriotism exist, for the most part, on separate planes – and much the better for it. A British Catholic may follow Church doctrine and hold the Papacy in the highest reverence, but will likely identify as British first and foremost, and it is to the country that their primary allegiance lies. The same could be said of most British Jews, or mainstream British Muslims.

But there is a sizeable, vocal block of non-mainstream Muslims who clearly do not identify themselves as British first and foremost, who in some cases feel that they are pitted against their non-Muslim neighbours and compatriots because of their faith. And these people are eagerly capitalising on events taking place many thousands of miles away – in Iraq, Syria and Gaza – to pledge their solidarity with and allegiance to this religious, cross-border fraternity before they give any thought to Britain, the country that gives them life and liberty.

This has to stop, but in order for the situation to change it must first be recognised as a problem. This recognition needs to come from Britain’s mainstream Muslims first and foremost – of course community leaders and parents can only do so much to teach tolerance and British values when social media and internet voices speak the language of extremism, but still an effort must be made commensurate with the scale of the problem.

But the rest of us have a role to play too. Where there is genuine Islamophobia, we must confront it and correct misconceptions about moderate, mainstream Islam. But equally, we must not be cowed into defending extremism when we encounter it, for fear of being labelled racist or intolerant. We have seen the insidious harm that can be done when a blind eye is turned to the extremist threat in the case of the Birmingham “trojan horse” schools scandal.

The people who chose to hung the black flag from the gates of the Will Crooks estate in Tower Hamlets were not merely expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza in the course of the current conflict with Israel. They went above and beyond that statement of solidarity (which was itself inappropriate as it presumed to speak for the whole community without their consent), and flew a flag which they knew to have connotations of violence and extremism. Any pretence that it was all just an innocent misunderstanding was shattered when the flag was re-flown again days after being taken down.

Unless and until the wall of stubborn, self-imposed segregation is broken down between tolerant, mainstream Britain (including moderate British Muslims) and those sullen holdouts who feel stronger identification and fealty to primitive, medieval dogma than to their own country, Britain will continue to wrestle with this toxic (and increasingly existentially threatening) issue.

And before long, an offensive flag flying in the shadow of Canary Wharf will be the very least of our concerns.

 

Photograph: From Trial by Jeory blog.

Not Just A War Cry

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Fox and Friends

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I generally try to avoid writing about the shenanigans that take place on Fox News’ morning show, “Fox & Friends”. The cast is assembled from a pool of failed, lightweight, B-team journalists who either know nothing about the complexities of the world (think Steve Doocy), or ones who are highly educated but disingenuously dumb themselves down to appeal to the Fox News viewer (think Gretchen “I looked up the word Czar in the dictionary” Carlson).

But on this occasion they make it to the pages of my blog because one of them – Brian Kilmeade, on the right in the above picture – was taken back to school by Senator John McCain, who was a guest on yesterday’s show. Politico reports:

Sen. John McCain criticized Fox & Friends’s Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday after the co-host said he had “a problem with helping out” members of the Syrian opposition who were shouting “Allahu Akbar” as rockets rained down in a government-held district of Homs.

During an interview with Sen. McCain, Kilmeade played the clip of the Syrian opposition fighters in order to suggest that McCain’s plan to deliver weapons to opposition groups could ultimately backfire, putting rockets in the hands of terrorists.

 

“Allahu Akbar” means “God is great”, of course. It is akin to a Christian shouting “Thank God!”, as McCain patiently explains to the dimwit Kilmeade. Just because a phrase is hijacked by radical fundamentalists and turned into a war cry as they fly aeroplanes into buildings or press the plungers on their suicide vests, does not mean that it loses its original meaning:

“I have a problem helping out those people screaming that after a hit,” Kilmeade said.

Sen. McCain fired back, “Would you have a problem with an American person saying ‘Thank God! Thank God!’?”

“That’s what they’re saying. Come on!” Sen. McCain said. “Of course they’re Muslims, but they’re moderates. I guarantee you that they are moderates. I know them and I’ve been with them. For someone to say ‘Allahu Akbar’ is about as offensive as someone saying ‘Thank God.'”

As difficult as it can sometimes be to agree with John McCain – given his erratic oscillations between being the bitter, ornery old man failed presidential candidate and the measured voice of reason and geopolitical knowledge (if not foreign policy wisdom) – one must admit that he is quite right in this particular case.

And if Brian Kilmeade needs any further reminder that hearing the phrase “Allahu Akbar” does not necessarily mean that a Big Scary Muslim is about to kill him, he would do well to watch the video, shared previously on this blog, in which a grieving Syrian father is reunited with the little son that he believed to have been killed in a strike by pro-Assad forces:

 

The words that the family and the overwhelmed father cry out in joy as they embrace the boy?

Allahu Akbar.