British imam's daughter under police protection after converting to Christianity
The Times Online reports:
A British imam's daughter is living in fear of her life under police protection after she received death threats from her family for converting to Christianity. The young woman, aged 32, whose father is a Muslim imam in the north of England, has moved house 45 times to escape detection by her family since she became a Christian 15 years ago.
And who's taken up the cudgels for the woman? The women's liberation movement? The Left? Why it's ...
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, will claim "freedom to believe" is under threat in Britain because of Islamic hostility to conversion.
Hannah, now employed in multi-faith youth work and who gives talks to churches on Islam, is the daughter of a Lancashire imam whose seven other children are demanding she return to Islam. She has been in hiding, since her home was attacked by a group of men armed with knives, axes and hammers, in 1994. She will describe today how she is in fear of her life after the death threats against her were recently renewed. ...
Pakistan-born Dr Nazir-Ali, who has a Christian and Muslim background, is patron of Lapido Media, funded by donations and trusts including the Jerusalem Trust. The word ‘lapido’ means ‘to speak up for’ in the Acholi language of Northern Uganda. The charity has been named in honour of the courage of Acholi church leaders who campaigned for an end to a little-reported 20-year war there, involving the abduction of 25,000 children.
The story is interesting because it advances two conjectures. First the native Western liberal intellectual elite is going betray every principle it espouses to a) bash America; b) keep itself "safe". As I have often said, the War on Terror has been a tragedy for the Left in a way that it has never been for conservatives. The second conjecture is that the real opposition to Islamic theocracy will come from Muslims, ex-Muslims and Christians from the Third World or Westerners who have somehow avoided drinking the fatal elixir of political correctness.
In contrast to Dr Nazir-Ali is the recent behavior of the BBC. The Daily Mail reports:
The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and didn't pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court heard yesterday.
The organisation gave Mohammed Hamid, an Islamic preacher accused of radicalising British Muslims, a £300 fee and paid for fellow defendants to go and be filmed for a documentary.
After the botched July attacks Hamid told a BBC reporter he had worked with on the programme 'Don't Panic, I', Islamic' that he knew the identities of the culprits - but she felt 'no obligation' to tell police, the court heard.
The journalist informed her boss and the information was passed on up to senior executives but a decision was taken not to pass it on.
The prosecutor was incredulous. Should he have been?
Ms Suleaman said she spoke to Hamid soon after the failed attacks on July 21 2005 and he sounded 'guarded' and 'worried'.
She claimed he had been shocked that he knew the accused and was worried they might call him as they were on the run.
Prosecuting barrister Duncan Penny asked her: 'Did you tell him to go to the police?'
Ms Suleaman replied: 'I don't think I needed to.'
Mr Penny said: 'Here was a man who told you that he knew those individuals who, as I understand it, were currently still at large for what on the face of it was the attempted bombings of the transport network a fortnight after it happened, and he was telling you he had some knowledge of them?
Ms Suleaman said: 'I got the sense that he was already talking to the police.' She added: 'I referred it to my immediate boss at the BBC. I wasn't told that there was an obligation.
'I obviously had to report back to my immediate manager at the BBC. In fact it was referred above her as well.
'It was such a big story. At one stage the head of news at the BBC was involved. No one at any stage said there was an obligation.'
posted by wretchardthecat at 12/05/2007 04:49:00 PM
28 Comments:
Debate on Apostates in Islam, Al-Risala TV
Wretchard -- the Left/Elite's response to Jihad has been part and parcel of the "nobility's" war on the people.
And it's likely to produce a counter-war on the nobility (and their allies) by the people.
Spengler over at Asia Times writes a lot on this general topic. This week in "Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam" he writes:
Secular liberalism, the official ideology of almost all the nations of Western Europe, offers hedonism, sexual license, anomie, demoralization and gradual depopulation. Muslims do not want this. In Africa, Christian missionaries go to Muslims and offer them God's love and the hope of eternal life. But I am aware of no Christian missionaries active in the Muslim banlieue (outskirts) of the Paris suburbs or the Turkish quarters of Berlin.
By contrast, there is indeed a war with Islam, and it is being won in parts of the world where Christians wage it on spiritual grounds. No Christian army has had to march in its support. Europe, meanwhile, is losing ground to Islam because it declines to fight.
Or course the BBC would say it is neutral. One man's terrorist is another's paint ball partner (with a good sense of humor, too!)
The Spengler article can be found at:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/IL04Aa01.html
Maybe this address will fit (it's all his recent articles):
www.atimes.com/atimes/others/spengler.html
People who have made the mistake of taking Marxism at face value, like Christopher Hitchens or the Euston Group, feel that the Left has "betrayed" its principles by hooking up with radical Islam. That's not entirely true; I think it has betrayed them, and that is a different matter altogether.
The old Bolsheviks who finally faced up to what Stalin was also felt that he had hijacked their faith. But I think history will show that it was not so. He understood the Leftist creed far more perfectly than they did; it was they who deceived themselves about what they believed in.
That's why the silent partnership between the Left and radical Islam works so well. They are fundamentally totalitarianisms in a deceptive skin. But essence calls to essence far more strongly than apparently contradictory appearances.
Agreed Wretchard though what will amount to a war of the people against various nobility groups and shock troops will turn very ugly very fast.
That's always been the way of war. The energy of a people finding itself besieged and endangered of what little it has is quite different from what the West has experienced say post 1945.
And is there no legal charge that can be made against these immoral BBC idiots that had such knowledge, and felt "no obligation" to come forward?
It seems to me that there most likely would be something applicable in the legal code of the U.K., and furthermore that it would be a damned good idea that these fools who had information regarding mass murder should be prosecuted, and vigorously so.
To not prosecute sends the wrong message ... the message that they did indeed have "no obligation" toward their society, nor to civilization itself.
[T]hey did indeed have "no obligation" toward their society, nor to civilization itself.
Islam and its clerical elite writ large.
The people who work for the BBC don't believe they are outside society, they consider they are above it.
What they believe about themselves is functionally equivalent to a belief that they are our new class of aristocrats. Immunity from the law is just one of the attendant benefits.
If you were going to guess, what do you suppose the ethnicity of someone named Nasreen Suleaman is?
If you were going to guess again, what do you suppose the religion of someone named Nasreen Suleaman is?
Why is everyone stunned and amazed that someone named Nasreen Suleaman is pooh-poohing terrorism and neglecting to inform the authorities about potential terrorists given that since 9/11 NO Muslims (except recently in Iraq) have EVER spoken out to police to inform on their fellow Muslims?
What on earth did the BBC and the British taxpayers whose dole puts money in Ms. Nasreen Suleaman's pocket *think* was going to happen?
Maybe the BBC lawyers concluded they had no strict obligation. But in the past society didn't run off strict legal obligations but culture. Daily life was governed by the customary thing, not lawyers.
Multiculturalism really implies that the old cultural bonds are replaced by strictly legal ones. Multiculturalism means we are free of mainstream culture and custom; because by definition the mainstream culture no longer exists.
Nations are no longer a community but communities held in an uneasy peace by the strict letter of the law. From there it is a natural progression to a Lebanon-like society where each group must be strictly represented. The token Asian, token White, the court jester Christian, etc.
To the expostulation "for God's sake!" the reply is "which God?"; to the objection "but of course" the answer is "I don't know what you are talking about". It is a situation tailor-made for intrusive government; because having reduced social peace to the strict letter of the law each community becomes dependent on the state for ethnic and personal survival. The Ottoman empire worked something like that. It works very well for the men at court who go being peripheral to society being at its very center. The BBC isn't acting perversely. It's acting in its own interest.
The United Kingdom, like many of the industrialised European countries, has a history of conflict between the aristocracy and mercantile upper classes on one hand and the working classes on the other hand. (I feel like an idiot pointing out the bleeding obvious, but... here goes...) I've been aware from friends who've lived in London, and from various other informal sources, that many of Britain's town councils have been dominated for decades by doctrinaire radical leftists.
From that perspective you can understand the long-standing hostility the lower classes have toward the upper classes, including resentment for aristocrats like the Royals still receiving allowances from tax revenues; and grasp why socialist pipe dreams of wealth redistribution and cradle-to-grave government services would appeal so acutely.
As the influx of new U.K. citizens from former colonies rises in relation to the falling birthrate among the indigenes of the British Isles, sentimental attachment to traditional values --- like, oh, respect for Habeas Corpus or The Magna Carta, or a free press. Of course, the U.S. certainly has "haves and have-nots" with all the attendant jealousies and tensions. But the U.S. is made up of the folks who LEFT their older countries mostly in order to come to a country which was prepared to reward people for their efforts rather than for their bloodlines, so it seems folks are less willing to give up on the dream.
Long before the wholesale migration of non-Christian populations began changing the fundamental demographics of the voting public, the upper strata of the Church of England had abandoned any pretense of actual FAITH. While belief in the divinity of Christ, or the Virgin Birth, or even the existence of a GOD --- ANY god; ANY spiritual basis for the human experience --- frame the Christian credo, those are not particularly relevant to advancement to high office in the Anglican Church.
These make great ammunition for writers of sly comedies like "Yes, Mister Minister," "Rising Damp," "Red Dwarf" and "Black Adder" but it doesn't do much to bolster the spine of a people besieged. For fourteen centuries, Islam has been spread by the sword. The beheadings of Indonesian schoolgirls; the rape and murder of schoolchildren in Beslan; the bombing murders of hundreds of Spanish commuters in Madrid and more hundreds of Hindu Pilgrims in Pakistan and India; a sustained 15-year history of scores of murderous attacks on international tourists by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; the kidnapping and murder of missionaries and tourists in the Philippines; the bombing of tourist bars in Bali; these and thousands of other acts of violence by Muslims against citizens of countries around the world are merely the most recent atrocities in a very long war waged by Islam on its neighbors. It has never ended; it has only been temporarily suspended when political maneuvering has occasionally promised momentary advantage.
It seems to be unfolding that those who regard themselves as the ultra-sophisticated of this moment will be as irrelevant to the salvation of their society as have been the privileged elites of many other times, while the groups standing up to resist tyranny are the same groups held in such contempt by those same folks.
ooops.
"sentimental attachment to traditional values FALLS!"
That's why the silent partnership between the Left and radical Islam works so well. They are fundamentally totalitarianisms in a deceptive skin. But essence calls to essence far more strongly than apparently contradictory appearances.
Perhaps that explains the existence of "Beefcake Nazis", for the Nazi Party encouraged Communists to join -- a favor later returned by the East German Communist Party. It also explains David Duke's friendship with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
One should be suspicious of anybody who claims to be indispensable to defeating Islamists. After all, like the Fascists before them in Italy, Germany's National Socialists posed as Germany's savior against the Communist menace. One should be suspicious of anybody who not merely levels false accusations against other anti-jihad factions, but does so in a simple and repetitive manner to drown out any other explanation.
Few things would be more helpful to the Islamists than a decrease in personal freedom, for a slave of one master will more easily serve another. Thus, one should be suspicious of bullies, for bullies feel empowered by totalitarianism. Although one needs to guard against totalitarian infiltration, the anti-totalitarian cause is not helped through a descent into a totalitarian witchhunt. Likewise, an accusation of treason is extremely serious and must only be leveled when absolutely necessary; a disagreement over tactics does not suffice to prove treason.
We need to fight. We also need to be free. Our freedom of expression and freedom of religion are weapons in the arsenal of our defense, for one cannot fight totalitarianism with totalitarianism without succumbing to totalitarianism. So long as we continue to fight back, we cannot be defeated, for our enemy's will to fight is dependent upon our will to capitulate. And that includes any propensity to capitulate to local bullies. This is why any long term opposition to al-Qaeda must be an opposition to totalitarianism in general irrespective of its coloration.
"It also explains David Duke's friendship with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
Isn't that rather more simply explained by the fact they are both fanatic antisemites?
I agree that both Islam and the Left are totalitarian, but I don't agree that in essence they are quite the same. I point it out this way: The Left will support Islam, it's violence; Islam will never support the Left.
The reason is this: In Islam rage is righteousness. In his rage the Moslem serves Allah by attacking the enemies of Allah. The rage itself is the authentication of righteousness, and in righteousness it is proper that the Muslim should dominate others.
The Western elite Left, on the other hand, while it has it's own rage, has no Allah for authentication, but they do know they are righteous and they do have their own authentication, and it is this: the denial of their past. This is their authentication and their righteousness and their enlightenment. Everything in the past is turned on its head. Good becomes bad and bad is good. It's definitional. And in this new and liberating morality surely they must have authority over those lesser and ignorant beings who still foolishly cling to the old mythologies.
The catch though is this: His authority, his enlightenment --in that it is given to him by the denial of his culture-- can only have force within that given culture. Within that culture he can properly dominate the unenlightened, but outside of that culture he has no authority, no force, no given power at all.
And it's for this reason that when a man of the Left is confronted by a man of the faith of Islam he has no power. He has not believed Islam, has not denied Islam, he is not superior. Yet an alien force stands before him, incomprehensible, and toward it he has no moral bearings at all.
The man of Islam, or the other hand, still has Allah. The force he is given by his rage suffers no confusion. A bug is before him and can squashed as naturally as any other bug.
It is not obscure what force it is that is needed to fight Allah.
The Left sees radical Islam as a tool they can use to destroy their enemies.
Radical Islam sees the Left as their tool against their enemies but unlike the Left they also see that this tool is also an enemy and will have to also be destroyed in the course of using it.
The Left thinks that their tool can simply be tucked safely away when they are through using it.
To me they are both wrong and insane but the Left is also stupid.
Theology and how many terrorists can dance on the head of a pin are all very well, but the basic question in this particular case should be: what will England do about the BBC?
Or should anything be done at all, since perhaps the English *like* what's being reported to them, given that they just voted out a terrorist fighter in Tony Blair and voted in ... what?
mouse, at the risk of repeating geoffb's thoughts; as the Muslims like to say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The BBC is the ballast in the sinking English ship. It's gravity, damnit, it's the law... don't fight it.
It seems to be unfolding that those who regard themselves as the ultra-sophisticated of this moment will be as irrelevant to the salvation of their society as have been the privileged elites of many other times, while the groups standing up to resist tyranny are the same groups held in such contempt by those same folks.
In the words of Srdja Trifkovic:
The elite class has every intention of continuing to “fight” the war on terrorism without naming the enemy, without revealing his beliefs, without unmasking his intentions, without offending his accomplices, without expelling his fifth columnists, and without ever daring to win. Their crime can and must be stopped. The founders of the United States overthrew the colonial government for offenses far lighter than those of which the traitor class is guilty.
NahnCee
I recognize that it's quite late to continue this thread but I only now read your comment and so will write a few words in case you happen to check back.
The reason for theologizing is that it's a way of psychologizing. We're in a battle, what Bill Roggio calls The Long War. In something of such duration, fought domestically as well as on foreign soil, the side that will win is the side with the greater moral force.
How do you determine who has what force?
Islam has a force that is eternal. As long as the faith remains the force remains, and it's a rather unique force in that to be righteous you basically just have to be peeved. And opposed to them is what? The elite Left. The Left has force, they certainly mess with me in ways I don't like, but what's the source of that force, who gives them that force? I do. If they can make me angry they're very well satisfied. Fundamentally, their only moral certainty is that they're better than I am.
But what if they meet a Muslim who merely wants to cut their throat? They can't stop a Muslim in his tracks simply by being smug. Smug doesn't register on a Muslim. This forces a calculation outside of the Left's psychological structure. They face a man untouched by their scorn and contemptuous of their cultural norms. So what can they do? Being superior and perfect by their own self-definition they offer friendship. Certainly this would please any reasonable man. How much force does this proffered friendship have in the mind of the Muslim who just wants them dead? But this is all the Left can offer, because in facing a foreign culture they have no force because no convictions. In the long war then, who is it who's going to win? There's no doubt, it's been decided already... Unless The British get a Texas cowboy in their Parliament.
So what's going to happen with the BBC? Nothing. As has been noted, once Islam is done using the Left they will destroy the Left.
NahnCee,
I don't know what the laws in England are, but in the United States, if the prosecutors didn't bring charges of aiding and abetting a felony, the people affected by the bombing would certainly bring civil charges against the BBC.
I'm wondering now if anyone's bothered to give the Imam's daughter a gun and taught her how to use it. It might be remarkable how much less blood-thirsty her family would suddenly become if they knew there was a serious possibility they'd be spouting a third eye between their current two beady ones.
The BBC "felt no obligation" to tell the police?
Membership in a civilized society places moral obligations upon its citizens of tolerance, civility, honesty and, in emergencies, mutual aid. By repudiating its obligations, the BBC has lost all right to the accompanying benefits.
This is Britain Nahncee, gun possession is quite a bit more difficult than in the States (or most of the US, anyways).
I suppose the system is set up this way for just this reason. She is entirely dependent for her protection on keeping a low profile, as the State has no real means, nor even interest, in protecting her. Such is that she is essentially a prisoner in her own home, in her own land. One freedom begets others, and a curtailing of one freedom restricts just the same.
So in other words, the state cannot protect her, and she has the freedom to become murdered ... and you're proud of that.
There is, of course, nothing on NOW's website about this. In fact, NOW assiduously avoids mentioning Muslim intolerance and violence while constantly inveighing against Christianity.
There is, of course, nothing on NOW's website about this. In fact, NOW assiduously avoids mentioning Muslim intolerance and violence while constantly inveighing against Christianity.
A Spanish journalist once said:
"At some point silence is no longer consent. To remain silent is to lie."
Just as Muslim silence over global terrorism is no longer merely tacit consent but a definite lie, so it is with feminists. Their own silence when confronted with the most brutal form of institutionalized misogyny on earth has gone well beyond consent and become the lie.
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