Comments on: Sunday Spew on Abdul Bari: see the irony?

By: Thersites

Thersites — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:39:55 +0000

The important thing about Granada after the reconquista is that there was a higher percentage of muslims than elsewhere,which meant that there was less surrounding social pressure to conform. Other parts of Spain absorbed former muslim families into their populations with little difficulty. In fact, L.P. Harvey in Muslims in Spain, 1500-1614 suggests that many of the moriscos were sincere in their conversions- or at least in their abandonment of islam- and that the hostility was culturally, linguistically and racially inspired rather than purely religiously based. After all, the moriscos were the ones who were willing to renounce islam publicly at least. The muslims who would not do that went to Morocco in the 1490s.

By: George Carty

George Carty — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:47:17 +0000

What is your evidence that “forced apostasy of Muslims is almost impossible, Mr Carty?

Andalusia in the last stages of the Reconquista, or the late 19th century Balkans.

By: thabet

thabet — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:02:34 +0000

Claudia Koonz in “The Nazi Conscience” has shown that when Nazi scientists failed to find some biological basis for their antisemitism, they turned to ‘behaviour’ and ‘culture’ to identify the ‘Jewish problem’:

“One of the biggest obstacles to the creation of an antisemitic consensus among both bureaucrats and academics, Koonz found, was that it proved almost impossible in the natural sciences to pin down any verifiable biological differences, to document the racial taxonomy that Nazi ideology insisted must exist. Instead, racial revisionism really took root in the humanities and social sciences. Along with anthropology and ethnology, Koonz notes that “history came into its own as the queen of the racial sciences” (p. 203), generating a flood of bibliographies, archival reports, monographs, and articles to underwrite both ethnic fundamentalism and antisemitism.”

So whilst on the face of it “Islam is not a race” is correct, how and what “Islam” means and is portrayed by different segments of society (media, politicians, academics, etc.) requires a little investigation which may well reveal certain prejudices. The leftist argument goes that “Islam is constructed as a race” in the context of Muslims being a minority in Europe (since race is not only associated with skin colour but with cultural and ethnic difference — there’s a flaw in this argument but that’s for another time).

(And let me add that yes such prejudices exist amongst all peoples.)

Also, “mainstream values” is gibberish political talk. No such values have ever been proven to exist.

By: Old Pickler

Old Pickler — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:53:46 +0000

Islam is a belief system, not a race. All belief systems can be criticised. If the belief system clashes with the mainstream values of the country, rather than expect the country to adapt, its proponents should consider whether they would be more suited to somewhere more in tune with those values.

By: Thersites

Thersites — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:19:44 +0000

A couple of differences between the 1930s and now: it was their enemies, not the jews, who said that they intended to take over the world and there weren’t and aren’t enough jews to make this aspiration credible except to the obviously deranged. As the Express group’s newspapers are declining circulation faster than any other newspaper group, what ever his reasons, Richard Desmond can’t be inspired by the desire to increase circulation. What is your evidence that “forced apostasy of Muslims is almost impossible, Mr Carty? The penalties imposed on apostates when muslims could impose them suggests that it is a prospect that muslims find very worrying in fact.

By: Noora

Noora — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:49:38 +0000

Well we already had an Iman blinded by someone coming into a mosque and saying he wanted to convert to Islam .

By: George Carty

George Carty — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:24:55 +0000

Following on from point 1, I’ve mentioned before on this blog about the “Masada Action and Defense Movement”, who were French neo-Nazis pretending to be Zionist radicals.

By: Antipholus Papps

Antipholus Papps — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:46:41 +0000

Why are comparisons with pre-war Nazi Germany far-fetched? We have a British government lying in order to plan and wage aggressive war, while relentlessly promoting hysterical fear of ‘terrorism’ in order to bypass due process and the rule of law. While Muslims are not yet being herded into ghettos and gas chambers, the trajectory we are on makes that a distinct possibility.

By: Random Guy

Random Guy — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:59:30 +0000

“Islam is not a race”

Give it a rest. That argument has had no weight since the moment it was first invented. Replace racism with islamaphobia if you want. Saying “Islam is not a race” is pretty much asking implicitly for the licence to be a racist.

By: jungle

jungle — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:16:16 +0000

Old Pickler said: “Islam isn’t a race, though.”

Total red herring. 90% of those who obsess over the evils of Islam are using it purely as a proxy for provoking hostility toward Pakistani (or Arab) immigrants, as your post amply demonstrates.

“If key spokesmen in the “Polish community” were going on about how Britain should change and adopt Polish/Catholic values,”

Only a tiny lunatic fringe from the Muslim community, if that, is doing this. The tabloids, of course, tell you “Muslims” generally do this every day. This is because they are shameless liars only interested in selling papers by provoking scare stories. Their articles about Muslims are almost always based on wilful misinterpretations and outright fabrications.

The more people they can cause to hate and fear the Muslims, the more papers Dirty Des sells with anti-Muslim headlines. Simple.

“we might all be justified in saying - well you chose to come here. Or if born here - sounds like you might prefer to live in Poland.”

No, punishing the general Muslim population for the (largely fabricated) alleged activities and pronouncements of the MCB is a ludicrous idea.