We must continue to fight extremist Islamism

Photo: Youssef Shoufan (Flickr)

“When the Islamic world hates us, we have only ourselves to thank.” So goes the dogmatic masochism which has characterised the multiculturalist Left for the last decade. But they are missing the point: Islam has been on the same path since its inception, as we can see from the inflexibility of its scriptures and supplementary texts. The path of Islamic conquest in the centuries after its inception corroborates this point, so too does the clash of the Jeffersonian Navy and the Barbary pirates in the 18^th Century.

Traditional Islamic attitudes towards apostates as well as ‘blasphemers’ (the definition of which is rather porous) is hardly compassionate, and so why aren’t we surprised that so many fundamentalists see it fit to organise terrorist atrocities such as the one which a group of British men from Birmingham men confessed to last month? The horrific carnage to rock the Boston Marathon conforms to type, and is an outrage committed by lone fanatics inspired by bin Ladenist doctrines of hatred and religiously inspired totalitarianism. This is the case; and it only serves to show that we have not yet won the war on terror or the war against theocratic fascism either. While these are in a minority, it is still a worryingly large proportion of the 1.2 billion Muslims we hear of, who are all assumed to be ‘offended’ by all supposed insult to their prophet or faith.

Home-grown terrorists are hardly new for the United Kingdom. The bosom of the nation (and as some Right-wing rags were so happy to point out, the welfare system too), nurtured the vile perpetrators of the rightly infamous 7/7 attacks on London in 2005. It was not a surprise to see bearded would-be-jihadits lining the streets of London on Remembrance Sunday to protest against troop deployments designed to save their co-religionists from torture and abuse by fascist gangs and evil extremists. These echo the very people who happily oppress, for example, women: those whom a book of moral instruction says it is acceptable to rape if they will not sleep with their husbands.

Protests are small in number, but attract disproportionate coverage due to canny media manipulation – such as proscribed group Islam4UK which planned to demonstrate in the symbolic town of Wotton Bassett – before it was banned by the British Home Secretary in 2010. Small they may be, but they are aided in their mission to spread awareness by the very multiculturalist doctrines which originally were intended to safeguard minorities from this sort of wanton thuggary.

The fact that so many Muslims seem to hate the western conceptions of secularism and gender equality cannot be put down, as easy as it may be for some who rely on the Muslim vote (like George Galloway) to do so, to western intervention in Islamic countries. His cry that the policies of Britain and America have created ‘ten-thousand new bin Ladens’ only shows how out of touch he is; not only with factual reality (Galloway watchers gave him up for lost years ago on that one), but also the opinions of some Islamic leaders in these newly liberated nations.

Despite the sentiment expressed above; there are examples of Muslims, indeed the great majority of modern practitioners: who buck the trend of violence and ignorance. The following is an attempt to illustrate this.

The President of Iraq, Mr. Talabani, is not only a Kurd (which is remarkable in itself), he is also a Muslim. He, and many other political leaders like him, can combine their faith with holding public office, and even co-operating with the Americans. He is joined in the Iraqi Parliament and corridors of power by Sunni and Shia practitioners, all of whom don’t hate the western forces (who aimed to improve their lives by removing a brutal tyrant) simply because of their religion. Give them some credit!

Just because they subscribe to one religion does not make them automatically wish to kill all those who do not. Fundamentalist Islam teaches to kill non-believers, but individuals make their own choices; this is why suicide bombers are largely young men, devoid of all hope and love for anyone who isn’t supernatural. It is possible for rational people to escape the barbaric encirclement of dogma, in order that they might be peaceful and spiritually free.

What we need to do, and do so forcibly, is to break down the reasons for the latter example: ghettoisation, decline in respect for tolerance, and other peoples’ freedoms, and the isolation and ignorance which comes from traditions of mutual loathing. Multiculturalism keeps communities segregated from each other, only facilitating extremism and cultural illiteracy.

By all means tackle the problem, and the work the UK police is doing in combating potential terrorist activity is largely faultless, but we need to tackle the two root causes of the issue: the wicked use of the Quran peddled by grubby, demagogic, Imams; and the lack of serious links between communities. Sociological bankruptcy is not helping reconciliation.

So yes, it is our fault. But not through any action of anti-Muslim provocation – other than merely existing. Our crime, and why we are to be haunted with the spectre of extremist Islamic anger until this squalid little ideology is stamped out, is not combating the sinister doctrine of exceptionalism which has fostered such a master-servant relationship. Even moderate Muslim voices, compressed by the media need to shape a narrative into one, easy-to-use stereotype, are marginalised by the continued lack of any serious campaign against the pernicious nature of absolutist Islam in the UK.

Our cultural and military deference to Islamic extremism and the culture of inbuilt violence which emanates from a minority reading of a holy book is what has led directly to nastily capricious heights, creating a default setting of outrage. Until we can promote secular values in society, and remove ourselves from the demeaning task of pandering to religious authorities in search of solutions, we will continue to see the sort of evil which was luckily foiled by the law. Too bad Boston was not quite so lucky.

James Snell. Follow on Twitter @James_P_Snell

The free Press keeps democracy ticking. Its failings can be covered by conventional laws.

Not the only one hacked off. Photo: Liberal Democrats (Flickr)

It isn’t often that I wish I wasn’t born in Britain. I am proud (or at least as proud as anyone can be about an accident of birth) of my country: I find its history fascinating, its past leaders inspiring, and the lessons it has provided for the rest of the world powerful reminders of the rule of freedom and the continuation of ‘modern’ values. There’s a reason why Westminster is referred to as the ‘Mother of Parliaments’, after all.

One of the key things keeping democracy ticking is the concept of a free Press. British Press has not faced any state regulation since the Bill of Rights in 1689 agreed freedom of speech and the restriction of royal prerogative; this was supplemented by Parliament not renewing the Licensing Act in 1695. It is therefore ironic that a Royal Charter will be used to implement the proposed regulation of Britain’s media, not an Act of our democratically accountable Parliament. The way that this plan has been created; cobbled together in the dead of night, by a group of wonkish SpAds, shows its qualities resemble a shoddy compromise, but this time not over petty policy, but the fundamental liberties of British citizens.

It is here where the ancient traditions of the United Kingdom begin to unravel in the face of modern technology; and the persistent efforts of a few affronted celebrities. One online petition – of which numbers are impossible to verify – seems to suggest that a lot of people want regulation, and so, to appease the fatal opinion polls, it was quickly, and shamefully, called for.

I can’t think of a less trustworthy bunch than Hacked Off. Their primary support base is made up of sleazy semi-notables who wish to get compensation for being found out; people like the disgraced actor Hugh Grant, who has become a professional windbag and wants to find a way to censor the tabloid newspapers whom he so despises. They didn’t force him to pick up a prostitute, they merely reported on it, but who thinks his vigour to regulate such a vital institution came from anything other than spite?

My patriotic admiration is now sorely lacking. Britain’s leaders are homogenous clones, each coming from cosily secure affluent households. They get away with the gulf between them and the majority of the British people by hiding their vast wealth and always appealing to the unidentified ‘middle class’ (an annoying habit it appears they have picked up from across the Atlantic). I’m not knocking net worth or privilege here at all: as some of our greatest leaders were from less than ‘ordinary’ stock: Churchill, for example, was from a powerful ducal line.

It is the concentration of power in a small microcosm, below genuine aristocrats, but above almost everyone else, which irks me. All of our Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson in 1964, to the end of John Major’s premiership in 1997 were state-school educated. Since then; all of our heads of government have attended fee-paying schools. It is this concentration of power which is causing the elitist attempts to hurt tabloid newspapers above all others, as they publish unfavourable stories about Hacked Off’s millionaire donors.

America got it right with the First Amendment; it stands as a lasting testament to the freedom of individuals in the Great Republic. What is particularly galling, then, is that this rallying call on behalf of free speech and a free Press was based on the aforementioned British Bill of Rights, which is now being cannibalised to suit the tastes of a very wealthy and powerful media lobby, keen to protect their ‘clean’, but misattributed images.

I think it is genuinely deplorable for Max Mosley; whose German-themed spanking parties were uncovered by tabloid journalists, to hide his shadowy support of tight regulation behind innocent victims like the parents of Millie Dowler, a murdered teenager who’s mobile phone was hacked by News of the World journalists before that paper’s closure. They do have a case against some sections of the media, but all of the egregious offences committed against them are covered by conventional laws.

What we have now is the isolated political class desperately trying to regulate the Press; based on nothing more than a heartbreaking tale, and a list of wrongs which could all be punished by extant legislation. This is incubated by the back-scratching culture of supposedly ‘wronged’ love-rats, liars, cheats and frauds.

James Snell. Follow on Twitter @James_P_Snell

The tyranny of charity wristbands?

Photo: Cory Doctorow (Flickr)

The insidious culture of charity wristbands has moved from being the preserve of a ‘herd of independent minds’ into the centre ground, and now features on a yearly basis for fluffy, state-funded, bean-bathing Comic Relief. It is now very likely that you will, at some point in the next few weeks, (if it has not already happened) be accosted on the high street by some wholesome, brightly coloured space invader, jangling microbe-covered coins in a predatory way; asking if you’d like to join the elite club of band-wearers. This is marketed as one choice which will affect your whole worldview.

While the idea of a state-funded organisation campaigning to tell the very people who unconditionally support its continued existence to part with even more of their money is odd enough, my main problem is the cultish consensus which it all builds; which may not be challenged. Due to the apotheosis of Bob Geldof, it is considered in bad taste to suggest that money raised as part of Live Aid may have gone to slush funds for African dictatorships and may have even financed the forced resettlement which David Rieff suggests may have killed over 100,000 people.

All work of apparent charity is now exempt from criticism, and this is not in keeping with the idea of accountability for powerful organisations; which may have huge sums of money involved, and could have global reaches and a huge effect on the region that they work in.

An example of poor taste in the very well protected charity sector is the inordinately high salaries of executives, managers and high-fliers. That these people treat their jobs as an opportunity to advance their careers is not my main problem; it is the fact that their wages are paid directly by well-wishers who give their, often very generous, sums on the trust that it will be used to do good works: i.e. that which the charity advertises and is named for. For this money to end up in a pay packet is a sad indictment of the docility of the public, and the greed of those who claim to be helping humanity.

I would support Red Nose Day and all of its offshoots a lot more if it was hosted on a commercial network, although those who embody the universal hatred of anything Murdoch-shaped would probably blanch at such a spectacle. What it becomes is a tired, yearly, state-sponsored whip-round, which produces terrible TV, and loves itself even more than the rest of one of the most narcissistic industries around.

This is clearly not about charity, it is more about a desire to show off by wearing something supposedly symbolising your ‘caring’ attitude. It is a status symbol for pretentious pseudo-hippies who clearly see this as some achievement in itself. What it really does is relegate charity, one of the noblest aspects of British culture today, to a grubby financial transaction for a strip of translucent plastic. It is actively debasing the idea of charitable giving by making it yet another way of paying for a good.

But are they even effective? Probably not. They pretend, a lot like redundant internet babble such as KONY 2012, to be ‘raising awareness’, but this is impossible to measure and awareness rarely translates into action. Who among us can truly say that they have been convinced to donate merely because a holier-than-thou cretin has walked past, their arms festooned with polymeric tokens of their undying love for humanity?

It is, after all, just vanity; nothing else. Wearers could have just handed over the money, knowing that it was going to a good and worthy cause. But this is not enough for our image obsessed modern givers. No, only a visible physical manifestation will do.

They are also badly affecting the way we see people, as the example of Lance Armstrong shows. He is able to hide behind his foundation, created more as a marketing gimmick than out of actual conviction, to disguise his disgraceful record on mendacity. He shows that as long as you value style over substance, and pander to the needs of people, some will need that extra bit of yellow to set off their matching Gucci sunglasses and Louis Vuitton handbag. It was (and still is) built on a guilt trip and the clean cut image he has so sullied. Yes, let the bands, for all their worth, remain on sale. But do not allow him to skip the punishment by media he sorely deserves merely because of one lame idea which has less of a place in the history of battling cancer than most cigarette companies.

What we need to do is take back the charity sector, and make it more accountable. That executives can misuse the relative uncompetitiveness of the whole industry to further their own prospects and wage rates is disgusting. If we knew more about these charities; and demanded to know where our money was actually going, then we could have a proper and unbiased debate on the worthiness of the causes we chose to support. As for wristbands, they have become the agent of the happy-clappy neon consensus, where everything is rosy and you can change the world by displaying a single piece of unnecessary accessory on your arm.

James Snell. Follow on Twitter @James_P_Snell

Votes at Sixteen? No thanks.

Photo: Steve Lawson (Flickr)

With the recent questions about the legality of the planned referendum on the future of Scotland, much has been made of the inclusion of 16-year-olds in the decision. However, barely a month ago, MPs in the UK Parliament stealthily voted in favour of lowering the voting age. This is not the end of the debate, but it is certain to be defeated unless there is a dramatic swing in current opinion. The can of worms, however, has been opened again, and it is firmly back in the news.

The biggest new group of political supporters which are being ruthlessly courted are the young. This is seen most recently in the transparently politicised move by Alex Salmond, who has already chosen to give younger voters the opportunity to decide on Scottish Independence, a calculating move more based on potential numbers rather than any real conviction. He knows that younger voters are more naive, and also more likely to identify with Scottish nationalism as a result. They don’t pay taxes too, and so this serves as a boon to socialist parties, as they know that the level of financial self-interest will be lowest among those who the state (or indeed mummy) props up.

But the pathetic drive for politicians to associate with the young is derived from the baseless idea that they are a huge, and yet untapped, electoral resource. This is unsound logic, considering the massive lack of any apparent political interest among the under-25s. The very nature of the current political approach to dealing with the young has been misguided. Politics is not, and will never be ‘cool’. Any spin saying that enfranchising 16-year-olds will make them more involved is obviously rubbish. Even the website of the British Youth Council (which campaigns for a lower voting age) is mothballed and out of date; for example getting the age at which teenagers can leave school wrong.

It is often said that the young today are now more educated about politics, with citizenship lessons in schools. This is wrong, not only as citizenship is a total waste of time, but also because people are overwhelmingly more likely to be influenced by external factors, such as celebrity endorsements and parents’ voting habits. They could vote in a silly way, but are unlikely to come to any mature political decisions on their own.

Initiatives such as Youth Councils and Parliaments have succeeded in not only eroding national dignity by debasing the House of Commons chamber, but also subjecting minors to the irritating busybodies which always inevitably run for the ridiculous jobs. These self-regarding mini-Milibands run for the wrong reasons, but even those are trivial compared to the corruption of the older generation. It is not a salary or a grace-and-favour mansion which motivates them; but a slightly less dismal UCAS record. It has come to something when not even their cynicism is as grown-up as that of the professionals.

Politics has been described as ‘showbusiness for ugly people’, so we should not expect the young to take to the current crop of greying marionettes which dominate the political stage. Already we have seen age and experience in our ruling classes diminish, to be replaced by vacuous younger men who are not as accustomed to holding power as those who took office fifty years ago.

There is a worrying trend towards the superficial in political discourse, aided and abetted by the televised leaders’ debates which lead governmental selection to be little more than an immature popularity contest. With the involvement of younger voters; we could end up with a system more disfigured by physical attributes like attractiveness than before. It is a possibility that we could end up choosing the candidate who is the best looking, like a school council election, but this time investing them with actual power.

In short, our democracy is in difficulty already, with the rise of a statist Labour party, and equally statist Ukip (masquerading as Libertarians); as well as a cultural elite happily cracking down on press freedom. Now is not the time to risk denigrating our already anemic ruling class by mixing in the moronic would-be demagogues of the younger generation. We could do with a more serious political process rather than one conducted like a pin-up contest.

The young are flawed, selfish and arrogant; their major concerns are too domestic to truly matter in national debate. Their natural apathy is actually a good thing, as a disinterested youth are less likely to stir the pot for the sake of it. I myself would be enfranchised by any new legislation, but knowing my contemporaries as I do, I know for certain that without the maturity adulthood provides, they would damage democracy with their triviality and lack of life experience.

Giving 16-year-olds the vote is only a tired last throw of the dice from the political runts of the 2010 intake in Parliament. These people are absurdly ambitious and desperately seeking a way out from the crumbling shambles that is our political class. Shattered by expenses scandals and the over-riding sense of isolation from the very people they are paid exorbitant salaries to represent, this is failing attempt to break the toxic mold, and not to be seen as anything but a bid for publicity from some balding semi-notables.

James Snell. Follow on Twitter @James_P_Snell

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Egypt: A Bloody Shame Indeed

Morsi’s supporters celebrate victory. Photo: Lorenz Khazaleh (Flickr)

One of the major victories of the Arab Spring was the new raft of democratically elected leaders who came to power following the fall of dictatorial regimes who terrorised their people and ruled without regard for freedom of speech, of the press and the views of the down-trodden who inhabited the levels in society below those of the privileged elite who controlled so much of their lives.

This process of democratising the region led to the first free and fair Egyptian election in decades; the election of Mohammad Morsi, candidate for a previously banned party (the Muslim Brotherhood), who successfully won the election as President of the newly freed country. This was a fresh political experience for Egypt’s young population, with millions never having had the opportunity to vote before during the term of the last leader, Hosni Mubarak, and his long fiefdom over the whole nation.

This glorious enfranchisement made the whole country feel like it had a real say in events, for the first time in years. This made the elections held after Mubarak’s downfall particularly engaging and exciting for ordinary Egyptians; their pet parties had to win, in order to get in there first and truly shape the country so monopolised by the oligarchs. The political energy, of the sort not seen in the more apathetic ‘reserved’ European and American democracies, was hailed as another success of the Arab Spring, with a strong vibrant culture around voting becoming the centrepiece for all those who (correctly) supported the Egyptians in their valiant struggle for self government.

However, this joyous revelling in a new found ability to determine the leadership of the nation also created many problems. The movements of mass action which had characterised the protests against the regime also had an effect on the way the campaigns were run as well as the level of political discourse in the country. For even after the brave citizen-led fight to stop the tyranny had been done in a spirit of unity, vast chasms of division remained amongst the politically educated. There were huge amounts of polarisation and partisanship in the run up to the election.

The BBC did an excellent piece analysing the potential results and cross-referencing the potential voters. It turns out that women (by a considerable margin) favoured the non-Islamic candidate, Ahmed Shafik, who was considered by some to be a stooge for the former government. This rejection by womanhood is significant in two ways: the first is their disenchantment with the Islamic message preached by Morsi and his supporters (perhaps showing an awakening amongst those the religion oppresses most?). It is also significant in that women were actually allowed to vote, in direct contrast to other ‘Islamic Republics’.

The world may not be ready for a democratically elected Islamic leader of a free country. People in the West who supported the military intervention in Libya were hugely alarmed when the Leader of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Jilil, said that the new constitution of the country would be broadly based on ultra-conservative Sharia Law, ‘obviously’. It does appear worrying that those who so keenly wrote and spoke in favour of Arabs making their own political futures and choosing their own leaders, are then recoiling when they choose something alien to our experience. Let me be clear, if the new countries’ governments stay within a democratic framework, then there are no problems.

However; if, like in Egypt now, the government exceeds its own powers and gives itself new ones (which the Morsi administration is currently doing) then the world at large is legitimised in its’ worries for the people, and the region. The consequences of further international involvement in a region already struggling to rebuild after the last encounter with hellfire missiles and a democratically elected demagogue at the helm are not happy ones.

It is a true travesty, after winning an election, and the respect of the international community in his mediation between Israel and Palestine (which not only prevented an escalation of the region’s problems, but also demonstrated a new resurgence from Egypt as a new power in the area) he had proved himself capable of the office entrusted to him. To see all of that disintegrate in a matter of hours from statesman to mob orator, who has to watch his party headquarters burn as the collective will of the Egyptians is once more released on another leader with dictatorial ambitions.

Morsi is defiant; he cannot govern while others have the ability to challenge his decisions and to amend them, he has decreed that none of his actions can be changed by the legislature; this is controlling, and hardly the actions of a democrat. But the other implications of his new move are profound. He is now able to take any action necessary to safeguard the revolution. This is Leninist in essence, and any mention of emergency powers whilst in the presidency is pure Putin.

He may genuinely think that by his actions he is stream-lining the process of making decisions, and he may think that concentrating more power in his hands is a positive attempt to respond to crises quicker, and he may well take false consolation in the evidence: he has, after all, done very well in the only major problem to come his way so far.

But this is no true indication of the stresses of his job and the future challenges, where his course of action may not be so well defined. The default Arab response is to defend Palestine, and that has served him well so far, but how can we guess he will respond to a more convoluted situation: presumably involving Iran and Israel? He has no obvious route to navigate the storm of angry rhetoric, UN Security Council vetoes and powerful backers. Let us hope the violence and strife makes him change his ways; we don’t want a situation like 1917, where the errors of a revolutionary government were considered as strong as to warrant another, and more disastrous, upheaval.

James Snell