Radical Islam

Farewell, Civil Liberties

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Theresa May - David Cameron - Conservative Party - Civil Liberties- Free Speech

 

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'” – David Cameron, 2015

Pick your poison.

What’s worse? A Labour government that ruins the economy and condemns millions of people to lives of hard subsistence, bleating all the while about how fair and progressive they are, or a Conservative government promising semi-competent handling of the economy but itching to trample away our precious few remaining civil liberties now that they are no longer restrained by coalition?

Britain voted for the latter on May 7 this year, and on balance this was probably the right choice in the short term. But with David Cameron back in Downing Street and Theresa May re-confirmed as Home Secretary, anyone remotely concerned about civil liberties and jealous of their existing freedoms will need to organise to stop them being steamrollered in a flurry of quick legislating while this Conservative majority government is still in its honeymoon phase.

The fact that David Cameron could utter such words as the head of government of a western country is absolutely appalling, and only reconfirms everything that this blog and many others have disliked about the current Conservative Party leadership for some time.

Gone is any sense of small-L liberalism, trusting the people to know and do what is best for themselves and their communities. And in its place comes a heavy-handed, hawkish paternalism, made all the more offensive by the patronising tone in which it seeks to assert control over our lawmaking.

Continue reading →

Banning Hate Preachers Will Not Eradicate University Campus Extremism

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Islamist Extremism University Campus Britain 1

 

Prohibiting extremist preachers from speaking on university campuses will not stop the radicalisation of impressionable young minds – and the ongoing coalition row between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats shows the Tories at their authoritarian worst.

“Should these men be allowed in UK universities?” frets The Times of London, in a report which begins:

Radical and intolerant Islamist leaders preached to crowds of students at almost 200 official events in the past year, according to a study of external speakers at universities including Cambridge, Birmingham and University College London.

Segregated seating for male and female students is understood to have been implemented for at least a quarter of those public meetings held by the Islamic societies at 21 universities.

The issue of university campus extremism has been brought into sharp relief since it emerged that Mohammed Emwazi, or “Jihadi John”, may have been radicalised while studying at Westminster University in London. This revelation has led to renewed scrutiny of various Muslim student organisations, their invited speakers and their practices (such as segregated seating in some instances). And this scrutiny is often welcome.

But the government goes too far when it seeks to make universities responsible for enforcing the censorship of ideas deemed “extremist”, as the BBC reports:

Continue reading →

ISIS: Adept At Using Social Media, But Couldn’t Even Invent The Wheel

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

ISIS ISIL Recruitment Social Media Twitter 2

 

As Twitter becomes increasingly adept at blocking and terminating accounts associated with ISIS and Islamist terrorism, their army of supporters and sympathisers have been responding with death threats targeted at Twitter employees.

The Guardian reports:

Isis supporters have threatened Twitter employees, including co-founder Jack Dorsey specifically, with death over the social network’s practice of blocking accounts associated with the group.

In an Arabic post uploaded to the image-sharing site JustPaste.it, the group told Twitter that “your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you”. It warned that Jack Dorsey and Twitter employees have “become a target for the soldiers of the Caliphate and supporters scattered among your midst!”

What is most striking here is the fact that a terrorist state fuelled by a primitive, murderous ideology makes such liberal use of Western technologies and inventions to spread fear and hated, all without noticing the laughable irony of it all.

For in truth, even given a thousand years, the global caliphate longed for by ISIS could never produce anything comparable to a Twitter or Facebook of their own, much as they love to use these American social networks as a tool to recruit the vulnerable and dim-witted.

Such a theocracy could barely master the sorcery involved in creating fire, or invent something as simple as the wheel without external help, because the fundamentalist rejection of enlightenment thinking and embrace of death makes higher thought all but impossible.

Great innovations simply do not flourish in a primitive culture where music is banned, art and antiquities are destroyed, women are subjugated and the pursuit of any knowledge that challenges or contradicts the faith is punishable by death.

There is no reasoning with such a totalitarian ideology. Neither can there be any appeasement, for meeting ISIS half way or attempting to soothe their brittle egos at the expense of our own civil liberties and free speech will never be enough.

There will always be another insult taken, always another demand insisted upon and another death threat made, usually distributed via modern methods of communication that supporters of the Islamic State could never hope to create for themselves.

 

Cover Image: ISIS death threat posted to JustPaste.it

This Week’s Cowardly Assault On Liberty Comes To You Courtesy Of David Cameron

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

David Cameron Paris Attack Charlie Hebdo 3

 

It is nearly one week since murderous Islamic extremists launched their three-day campaign of terror across Paris, striking at one of the core pillars of western democratic society: a free press exercising their fundamental right to freedom of speech. But before the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the kosher market siege have even been laid to rest, David Cameron and his government have started planning their own assault on the rights of the individual and the foundations of a free society.

Of course, David Cameron’s assault is couched in the gentle, persuasive diplomatic language of the politician. There will be no masked men clad in black, no sudden hail of gunfire and no hostages taken – unless you count the right to live our lives free from intrusive snooping from a government that believes it can keep us completely safe, if only it knows enough about us all.

The Guardian provides a good summary of the enhanced laws and powers that David Cameron and the security services want to take for themselves:

Continue reading →

Only Fellow Muslims Can Cure Islam Of Its Fundamentalist Cancer

Samuel Hooper2 Comments
Christian Life Of Brian Charlie Hebdo Terrorism Islamic Fundamentalism
Clear provocation for a fundamentalist massacre

 

Dan Hodges poses an excellent question in his Telegraph column today: what if the Paris terrorists had been Christian rather than Muslim?

He does this to make a point that should be fairly obvious, but which too many of us continually miss – that were the shoe on the other foot, or rather the other religion, it would be unequivocally expected and demanded of moderate Christianity to root out the fanaticism from within its base, without delay and with no excuses or exceptions.

The fact that we add so many caveats and exceptions when making this demand of moderate Islam is therefore, according to Hodges, prima facie evidence that we currently give leeway and grant concessions to Islam that we would not do for any other faith. In Hodge’s imaginary alternate universe:

Then came another attack. Two Christian gunman walked calmly onto the stage of the O2 arena, and machine-gunned to death John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, as they performed their comeback tour. It was, their killers later revealed in a video-taped message, in revenge for the lampooning of Jesus in “The Life Of Brian”. Witnesses at the O2 claimed that as they ran from the stage, the assailants were heard to shout “We have just killed Monty Python”.

A day after the O2 attack, the BBC Today program sent a reporter to High Wycombe, to gauge the reaction of members of the local Christian community. It was “painful people had to die in this way” one interviewee conceded. But the Monty Python cast should not have mocked Jesus. “I love Jesus,” he said. “More than my mum, more than my dad, more than my children.” It was legitimate to insult individuals or people he added, “but not God, not Jesus. We will not allow that. If they are going to do that, that [the attacks] will happen again and again.”

Continue reading →