Showing posts with label Douglas Murray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Douglas Murray. Show all posts
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: If anyone missed Channel 4’s Dispatches the other night, can I very much recommend it? “Britain’s Islamic Republic” is available here and is vital viewing. Andrew Gilligan’s programme will be shocking even for those of you who, like me, thought they couldn’t be shocked by this sort of thing any more.
One interesting addition, if I may, which Brett at Harry’s Place also points out here. Though there has been a lot of press coverage of the documentary, there has been far too little outrage about the opening sequences showing the East London Mosque (yes, that one, favoured by Boris Johnson and Prince Charles) as the venue for events at which the most virulent anti-gay and anti-women perverts preach. I know that’s no surprise, but stay with me a moment.
One preacher, an evidently lunatic semi-literate called Abdul Karim Hattin, is shown playing what he calls “a game” called “spot the fag”. For this tittersome “game” he uses a slide to show a picture of Elton John beside one of the dead rapper “2-pac” (Tupac Shakur).
This confuses me a lot. I think the point this unfunny bigot is trying to make is that you can somehow recognise Elton John as gay because of the way he looks. But surely there is some mistake.
In the photo Elton John is wearing a respectable casual red top. Tupac on the other hand is topless, rather conspicuously ripped, and his naked torso glistening with sweat. Now I don’t want to spoil this “game”, but to my, not untrained, eyes I’d have identified “2-pac” as gay in this gay identity-parade.
But as it turns out, Mr Hattin also thinks (though for baffling reasons) that Tupac’s image was somehow gay. I’m not sure I go along with this. In any case, Mad-as-a-Hattin is saying all this whilst wearing what looks to me distinctly like an elderly lady’s nightdress. >>>
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Thursday, February 04, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders recommenced yesterday with a ruling on which expert witnesses the defence would be permitted to call.
When the trial opened a fortnight ago, Wilders asked for a rather sparky list of 18 expert witnesses. They included some noted experts on Islam and social cohesion. And also a few, ahem, practitioners of the same. They were to include Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot, stabbed and partly beheaded the film-maker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004. And also Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the jihadist cleric who was given the red-carpet treatment in London by former mayor Ken Livingstone a few years back.
Sadly the Dutch court haven’t allowed these witnesses or most of the others, leaving the defence with only three witnesses. They are expert Simon Admiraal and leading Dutch scholar Hans Jansen (author of numerous scholarly books and the hilariously titled recent Islam for Pigs, Donkeys, Monkeys and Other Beasts). Most interestingly the court has allowed Wilders to call as an expert witness the brave and eloquent Wafa Sultan.
Sultan made her name – and garnered her first fatwas – for a blinding hit-the-ball-out-of-the-stadium interview on Al Jazeera a few years ago viewable here. It caused terrible convulsions across the Muslim world, and also apparently in Sheikh al-Qaradawi who described her home-truths session as consisting of “unbearable, ghastly things that made my hair stand on end.”
I much look forward to seeing Wafa Sultan take the stand. Though I slightly pity the prosecution for having to attempt to cross-examine her. Read on and comment here >>> Douglas Murray | Thursday, February 04, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: There is nothing hyperbolic in stating that a trial which has just started in Holland will have unparalleled significance for the future of Europe. It is not just about whether our culture will survive, but whether we are even allowed to state the fact that it is being threatened.
The trial of Geert Wilders has garnered hardly any attention in the mainstream press here. Fortunately the blogosphere can correct some of this.
Wilders is a Dutch MP and leader of Holland’s fastest-growing party, the Party for Freedom. Just a few years ago he was the sole MP for his party. The latest polls show that his party could win the biggest number of seats of any party in Holland when the voters next go to the polls.
His stances have clearly chimed with the Dutch people. They include an end to the era of mass immigration, an end to cultural relativism, and an end to the perceived suborning of European values to Islamic ones. For saying this, and more, he has for many years had to live under round-the-clock security protection. Which you would have thought proves the point to some extent.
Now the latest attempt of the Dutch ruling class to keep Wilders from office has begun. Last week, apparently because of the number of complaints they have received (trial by vote anyone?) the trial of Wilders began.
The Dutch courts charge that Wilders ‘on multiple occasions, at least once, (each time) in public, orally, in writing or through images, intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion’.
I’m sorry? Whoa there, just a minute. The man’s on trial because he ‘offended a group of people’? I get offended by all sorts of people. I get offended by very fat people. I get offended by very thick people. I get offended by very sensitive people. I get offended by the crazy car-crash of vowels in Dutch verbs. But I don’t try to press charges.
Yet, crazily, this is exactly what is going on now in a Dutch courtroom. If found guilty of this Alice-in-Wonderland accusation of ‘offending a group of people’, Wilders faces up to two years in prison.
If anyone doubts the surreal nature of the proceedings now going on they should simply look through the summons which is available in an English translation here. It shows that Wilders is on trial for his film Fitna. And for various things he has said in articles and interviews in the Dutch press.
Now some people liked Fitna and some people didn’t. That’s a matter of choice. But by any previous interpretation it is not the job of courts in democratic countries to become film-critics. In fact it would create a very bad precedent. I thought the latest Alec Baldwin film stank. But I don’t think (though the temptation lingers) Baldwin should go to prison for it. Read on & comment here >>> Douglas Murray | Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
Friday, January 23, 2009
THE SPECTATOR: First the Netherlands prosecutes Geert Wilders for speaking against Islamic terror; now the London School of Economics has caved in to the threat of Islamist violence. Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, has been banned from chairing a debate on Islam at the London School of Economics today between Dr Alan Sked, a senior lecturer in international history, and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, a Muslim writer and lecturer, because the LSE fears his views will provoke violence. Those views are outspoken opposition to the Islamisation of the west and staunch support for Israel. >>> Melanie Phillips | Friday, January 23, 2009
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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