I haven’t had much experience of the religious variant, but one of my Muslim female friends, who lives in a provincial town, reported that she had been accosted in the street by someone trying to sign her up for their church, asking her if she believed in Jesus (peace be upon him). It tends to be evangelical Christians who do this, partly because they (unlike other branches of Christianity) regard proselytising as important, but also because other religions either don’t believe in attracting converts (eg. Hinduism) or simply because the UK is a Christian country, by heritage, and other communities don’t really feel that they have the right to spread their religion so aggressively. (Some groups do attract people of their own minority religion at home or in the street, like the Lubavitchers among Jews or the Tablighi Jamaat among Muslims, but they do not approach others, usually.) It is irritating because we should not have to justify our beliefs to a hostile, total stranger. They can also be quite intimidating and often seek out “don’t know” answers. They often promote a harsh, simplified version of the religion.

My view is that one should deal with these people by sticking your palm out towards their faces. They have no right to interrupt you as you go about your business. I particularly resent the charity representatives (mostly, I’m told, out-of-work actors) because I could not afford to sign up for a direct debit as I don’t have the income. Also, some of us have charities we donate money to or give of our time to, so nobody has the right to pressure us to sign up for theirs too; we often just can’t. Also, I don’t want to end up face-palming someone, thinking them to be a charity mugger, and discovering them to be a friend or relative. I do wish they’d find a better way of raising money.

The BBC’s radio programme More or Less, produced in collaboration with the Open University, debunk the notorious “Muslim Demographics” video which has been a big hit on YouTube and has been reproduced on dozens of websites. The statistics are often unsourced and sometimes invented along with statements by official statisticians:

Of the video’s claims that 90% of Europe’s population growth since 1990 is due Islamic immigration, only a fragment is true. Immigration is the main driver of population growth according to EU statistics and in some exceptional years, 90% of population growth has been down to net inward migration.

But that includes all immigrants coming into the EU, not just Muslims.

It is the claims made about individual countries that are most striking. The video says that a typical French family has 1.8 children but that French Muslim families have 8.1 children.

No source is given for this information and the French government doesn’t collect statistics by religion. So it is impossible to say what the precise fertility rates among different religious groups in France are.

But no country on earth has such a high fertility rate and in Algeria and Morocco, the two nations which send the largest numbers of Muslim immigrants to France, the fertility rate is 2.38, according to the UN’s 2008 figures.

In the Netherlands, according to the video, half of all newborns are Muslim, and in 15 years half the population will be Muslim.

But the Dutch office of statistics estimates that Muslims make up only 5% of the population. For Dutch Muslim women to produce half the nation’s babies, they would have to be giving birth at at least 14 times the rate of their non-Muslim neighbours.

See my earlier entry for other flaws in this video. You will be able to listen to the programme on Radio 4 at 1:30pm today or on iPlayer, if you’re in the UK.

Anna Scott-Brown about their choices to follow two very different faiths - Islam and Christianity. They discuss their strongly-held but separate beliefs, and how this affects their relationship within the family. As their own lives unfold, they also have to confront their mother’s terminal illness and come to terms with what her death will mean to them.

This was on last Tuesday, so will be available for another two days to listen online (you will need Flash, I think), or you can hear it on Radio 4 tomorrow at 8pm. I very much recommend listening to it.

My new toy,
originally uploaded by Indigo Jo.

This is my new Dell laptop; it’s an Inspiron 6400 with a Pentium Dual Core processor. Behind it is my aunt’s fireplace.

I must say I’m quite happy with it so far. I found Vista difficult to get to grips with, and one of my first tasks was to make room for Linux on the hard drive, which required me to delete Dell’s Restore and MediaDirect partitions. However, both systems work well although Vista was frustratingly slow at first.

Anyway I can’t write too much now as it’s work in the morning. More later, in sha Allah

It’s a story it’s difficult to react to, other than to say “what a terrible waste of an innocent life”, as others have said on the comments boxes. She cannot even be compensated now; she is 85 and suffered a stroke shortly after her meeting with her two brothers, and is unlikely to live to see the benefit of it. The question is, how many other old people - particularly old women, as they were the usual victims, sometimes for the same reasons that prompt “honour killings” in some places, sometimes because they had post-natal depression or other genuine illness - are still in institutions as a result of wrongful certifications, or when they ceased to be ill? One imagines that they are now living in care homes, as many of the long-stay institutions were closed down in the 1990s, the positive result of the much-derided “care in the community” campaign. However, surely some of them have brothers and sisters, or even nephews and nieces they knew when they were young. Perhaps a campaign should be launched to bring about family reunions.

I noticed one or two comments calling for the doctor responsible to be named and shamed, the authors having forgotten that the doctor was in all probability nobody of great note and can be safely be assumed to have died a long time ago - assuming that this doctor is solely responsible for her ordeal. I’ve also seen people using this case as an excuse for a bit of Brit-bashing, as if similar things didn’t happen in Europe or the USA. I’m sure similar things happened there as people’s attitudes weren’t that different.

This week’s Croydon Advertiser has a report on an apparent “religious war” which led to a teenager being stabbed in April 2005; the case is currently the subject of an Old Bailey murder trial:

An Old Bailey jury heard how the defendant, from Croydon, also 16 and who cannot be named, told police: “On the streets these days it’s like Muslims against normal people.

“Stefan [Persaud] and this other boy were Muslims and they were trying to turn people over to become Muslims.”

The youth died in a fight between his gang, “Take Them Out” and a rival gang “Till Death”:

The youth said fights had broken out between Stefan and the rival gang several times before he was beaten unconscious at the junction of Towpath Way and Davidson Road, South Norwood, on April 23 last year.

He said: “I heard there was a fight with Stefan a couple of weeks before.

“He and a couple of other people attacked [a co-defendant] on a bus.”

The teenager agreed that the fighting had escalated into a “mini war” and he said he heard youths shouting: “Is it war? Is it war?” as they clashed, but denied that he was part of the fight.

While not familiar with this case or people in that part of Croydon (despite my old house being near the other end of Davidson Road), it seems to bear the hallmarks of the so-called Muslim Boys, a pseudo-religious criminal gang which is known for its murderous antics in the Brixton area (see here, here, and here). When David Cohen interviewed them for the Evening Standard, it turned out that they are not really Muslims (see this earlier post):

When I ask Winston whether he believes in Islam, he prevaricates. “Sort of,” he says. “I converted when I was in prison. I found it relaxing, we got better food. Now we all go to mosque together. If I refuse, they blow [shoot] me, innit. I pray twice a day: before I do crime, and after. I ask Allah for a blessing when I’m out on the street. Afterwards, I apologise to Allah for what I done.”

A misconception about this gang is that they are some sort of London branch of al-Qa’ida, a mistake made by the clearly not very conscientious, or not very bright, journo on the Daily Mirror in January this year, who claimed that prisoners on one wing at Belmarsh jail were being attacked by “violent Islamic extremists” belonging to this gang, who hold weekly religious meetings at which “top members of al-Qaeda preach” (see earlier entry). I fail to see why detained al-Qa’ida suspects would bother themselves with this petty knife gang, who by their own admission are not really Muslims. (The Daily Moron made the same stupid accusation two weeks later.)

In reality, the “Muslim Boys” have nothing in common with the sort of Muslims who carry out terrorist acts, other than that they kill people. There is a history of Islamic terminology being used by Black nationalist groups like the so-called Nation of Islam, which alongside the association with violence lent to Islam by al-Qa’ida and various other groups, may well be what motivates these cut-throats to brand themselves Muslims as well. The fact is that a Muslim is one who affirms, believes and practices Islam, which these thugs do not (and even if they did, Islam certainly does not condone what they get up to). In the times we live in it is incumbent on the media to make this distinction, but they seem remarkably lax about doing so.

“Roddle Twaddle” and the Bakri affair

Shaikh Ya’qoobi of Damascus recently contacted one of the brothers on DeenPort to clarify his own position on this issue:

He recieved an email sometime back, whilst we were in Madina that someone on deenport had stated that he predicted the coming of the Mahdi next year. He wanted to clarify that in no terms did he mention the coming of the mahdi for any specific date/year, however he did mention, there were signs that the following years may lead to the advent of al Imam al Mahdi. He also stated that the Ulama have an optimistic feeling that the following years will bring in an era where Islamic civilisation will flourish. He passes his salaams to all users of this forum.