Islam, the West: Segregation, separatism and terrorism

‘Wherever fundamentalist Muslims have acquired power, their first act has been to establish Sharia, Islamic law, which as understood and practiced today owes very little to the Qur’an. So it cannot really be taken, in Islamic terms, as Divine. The Qur’an, as we (can) see, has remarkably few rules and regulations: most of the Holy Book is devoted to elaborating the attributes of God and the virtues of reason. What goes under the rubric of Sharia is mostly fiqh, classical jurisprudence, formulated in the Islam expansionist phase' (after Muhammad’s (pbuh) death. author)

(excerpt, with thanks, ‘Contemporary Issues’, No-Nonsense Guide to Islam, 2004, 2007)

MARTYR TO MOTHERHOOD
Weeping on UK television, here was a burka-clad Muslim woman, whose husband had spent months preparing the worst terrorist attack on mainland Britain (July 7) since Lockerbie (airliner brought down over Scotland, 1988). She was pictured as some sort of martyr to motherhood, an innocent victim of her husband’s deadly hatred. Yet she had to be prompted by the interviewer to condemn the London bombings at all. She did remember to use her moment in the spotlight to attack Britain’s anti-terrorist legislation. She wailed on about her own trauma, after being arrested on suspicion of commissioning, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism. She denied the charges, claiming they had led totally segregated lives (yet became pregnant twice by him). While denying the charges, what did she expect, a bunch of lilies and a condolence card from Victim Support? If she is indeed full of remorse and regret, she should give every penny she receives, from this distasteful and self-serving TV interview, to the surviving victims of July 7.
(excerpt, conflation, Columnist, UK national newspaper, July 2007)

The attacks of September 11, 2001 which killed among others 200 Muslims were roundly condemned by some of Islam’s most militant anti-American clerics and TV-experienced Muslim personalities. One in five of the world’s populations are Muslims, but while they like the clerics may share bin Laden’s grievances against Western domination, they like the clerics do not share his interpretations of (what constitutes, what is legitimate, what is permissible Jihad (‘Holy War’). The way this doctrine is manipulated to justify prejudices or political ideologies, Jihad is neither a concept universally recognised nor unanimously defined in the Muslim world. It is solely as a defensive response to oppression and injustice that the Quranic vision of Jihad is to be understood
(excerpt, conflation, book, No God But God, 2005-06)

THE SMEARING OF MALAYSIA
In the north of Malaysia, many older Malays believe the younger generation of Muslims has become puritanical and self-righteous. They say many women are now wearing headscarves but also tight jeans. Conservative Muslim youngsters (in the north) have protested about the indecent dress and ‘skin-bearing obscenity’ of a visiting America pop singer, forcing her to cover up. There have been new apostasy rulings (in the north). Chinese or Indians wanting to marry a Malay must convert to Islam. Some hardliners there are calling for execution of apostates. Caught together (sexually) couples have been forced to marry. Unmarried couples sharing hotel rooms are hunted down and arrested. Couples sitting too close on a park bench are fined in the Sharia’h court. Anonymous tip-offs are a thriving source of raids. But instead of being seen as paragons of Islamic virtue, enforcer teams in the north are allegedly prone to bribery and recruiting vigilantes. ‘They say they want to implement Islam, but the truth is they are really smearing Islam. If not stopped they really could become like the Taleban,’ said a representative of moderate Muslim professional women’s group, promoting equality, justice and freedom principles for women.
(excerpts, conflation, world report in UK national newspaper, August 2007)

The first UK prosecution based entirely on jihadi material on the internet has resulted in the jailing of three Islamist extremists who engaged in ‘cyber-jihad’ inciting terrorism and encouraging others to kill non-believers. They promoted martyrdom and holy war through online forums and websites. All three were students who lived with their parents in London and Kent.
(excerpt, report, UK national newspaper, July 2007)

We expect suicide bombers to be uneducated social outcasts who have been twisted by fanatics. But the reality can be very different.
(excerpt, comment on terrorism case, UK national newspaper, July , 2007)

Only Muslims defended their beliefs by burning down churches, destroying embassies and killing people. This path would not yield any results. Muslims has to ask themselves ‘What they can do for humankind before they demand that humankind respect them’. The clash seen today was between two opposites, between two eras, between a mentality that belongs to the 21st century and one that belongs to the Middle Ages, between rationality and the civilised, and backwardness and the primitive. It was a clash between democracy and dictatorship, between freedom and oppression, between human rights and violation of these rights.
(excerpt, conflation, Al-Jazeera TV interview, February 2006)

An article by a Muslim scholar-teacher, in London, published on a Muslim website in January 2008 received a host of critical responses, among them: ‘I am amazed at so much inanity compressed in so little a piece’. One of the article’s suggestions was that ‘There are hundreds of State schools in Britain where young Muslim children are in the majority - such schools might be handed over to Muslim educational trusts or Muslim charities for their management’. A critic said, ‘We Kafirs are being manipulated by pious sounding language. Spinoza insisted that we all not mistake superstition for piety, and yet 350 years later we are still doing that’. Another acid comment said, ‘The justification for honour killings, suppression of free expression, murder of apostates and general barbaric mentality comes from the sayings and behaviour of the prophet. We need to come down hard on any attempt to say that Islam leads to a civilised society, let alone be a religion of peace’. A positive note came from another: ‘I would not budge an inch on the negative aspects so many have condemned in this article, but the only long-term solution is to break down the us and them mentality, not stir it up. We must respond by highlighting our common concerns to disarm this man’s arguments. Humanity has its ancestry in common for a start. Fanatical theists often think there is something fundamentally different between those with and those without belief - the us and them - but we (in Britain, in the West)now know better ?(though we continue to fail in many areas? author). Let’s act on that’.
(excerts, conflations, UK Muslim website, Muslim article on UK Schools, heavily criticised, January, 2008)

During Ramadan 2007, an Islamic radio station in the UK broadcast ‘good luck’ messages to some of Britain’s dangerous terrorists, who are in Belmarsh high-security prison, south London. Radio Ramadan was granted a licence by the UK’s Ofcom to broadcast during Ramadan from the Greenwich Islamic Centre. An extremist website reported that ‘the brothers in Belmarsh’ had access to radios, listened to the radio station and the broadcast messages had been received. Belmarsh has as residents a cleric serving seven years for inciting murder of and the failed 21/7 London bombers. Ofcom is the independent regulator for UK communication industries.
(excerpt, conflation, UK national Sunday newspaper, November 2007)

LIVING SEPARATE LIVES IN THE UK
Are communities drifting apart, are ghettos emerging, are we In Britain (and other countries. author) sleepwalking to segregation? If we talk about 'sleepwalking to segregation', who is having the nightmare?" How can we pull people together, how do we promote inter-cultural interaction? The phrase ‘parallel lives’ has been coined to describe the separate communities of the northern towns of Bradford, Burnley and Oldham and others in the UK. Contrary to the idea of ethnic minority ghettos, there was increasing movement of ethnic minorities into suburban areas around big cities. Residential (and to some degree, educational) segregation has always been a feature of British cities: Leicester Square's Chinatown or Golder’s Green's Jewish community - and has never been regarded as a problem. Forms of segregation along lines of class is deeply entrenched into British society and has become even more pronounced in the last two decades, but no one talks about them. The segregation preoccupation is about difference and the fear it provokes; it makes visible signs of difference, such as head veils, problematic.
(excerpt, conflation, chairwoman’s summing up, two-day conference on Racial Equality, UK, November 2006)

Fundamentalism was always a tendency in Islam, as in every other religion, but did not gain permanent influence until the 18th century and the rise of Wahhabism. A sinful act, viewed as a product of human weakness requiring mercy, rather than punishment, triumphed. Today the stoning of adulterous women only exists in a minority of Muslim societies. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and ‘a few other places’ no more represent the entire Muslim world than Arizona, Indiana, Idaho, and Texas represent the entire U.S. Wahhabism is the main form of Islamic fundamentalism today, and it focuses on external realities, from its emphasis on outward forms of worship to its public execution of sinners. This concern with exterior appearance contrasts starkly with the Islamic commitment to mercy. Wahhab himself clung fiercely to denouncing people as unbelievers. He used Qur’anic verses originally ‘revealed’ about idolaters and extended their application to rival monotheists. At the end ‘everyone under the sun’ could be an idolater and, further, anyone who slew an idolater, when he (or she, today) died they would go immediately to Paradise. The clans and tribes magnified him. Wahhabism has been attacked by Muslim scholars for 250 years
(excerpt, conflation, website article by Stephen Schwartz and other sources, 2004, 2007)

(Abuse of Britain’s questionable ‘benefits system’ affects us all, indigenous citizens, Muslims and other recent immigrants) The systematic abuse of the UK’s benefits system by asylum seekers has been criticised by a UK MEP (member of the European parliament). One case concerned men claiming asylum after being soldiers in the Angolan war. Rather than find work, after arriving in the UK, they and others altered gyro payments claiming income support, disability living allowances, housing benefits and child tax credits to the sum of (believed) £400,000 a year. ‘This is yet another example of how our (UK) porous borders are letting down every law-abiding person in the country. Our open-door policy is a disaster. People like these see our country as a soft touch and they know exactly what they are doing. This country is already over-crowded. We have to be very particular about the kind of people we allow into Britain. We have to have an intelligent debate on immigration’, said the MEP.
(excerpts conflated, report in UK national newspaper, October 2007)

(an email to the author) The local Library here in Bishops Stortford (east UK) was sold off (by the local Council) and was converted into a mosque a few years ago. The windows were all blacked out, so nobody could see what was going on. Then, with the new restructuring of the town centre, the mosque was demolished but has now sprung up again in the Triad Art Centre. I see them going to their prayer sessions, dressed in pyjamas and going into a dark and foreboding old building (obviously too expensive to update, refurbish?). And now, only this week, on a visit to Sainsbury's, I actually saw one young Muslim woman, complete with black scarf, loading shelves. I made a cheeky enquiry, of her (English) colleagues, and learned she has been taken off the tills because, according to my informants, she refused to handle the booze. Not quite true, they added, she did initially on being hired handle alcohol on check-out, BUT THEN, so they insisted, her burka-clad mother happened to be in the store and put a stop to it.
(an email story told the author by a trusted, Middle-Way, friend, autumn 2007)

THEY CHANT ALLAH ON A PLANE
The six bearded men were behaving suspiciously when USA airports were on high alert for sky terror during the Holidays. ‘A number of things gave the flight crew pause’, an airline spokesman said. According to witnesses and police reports, the men: made anti-American statements, made a scene by praying and chanting ‘Allah’ and asked for seat-belt extensions, not needed. They refused requests by the pilot to disembark for more screening. Cockpit checks (to ground) revealed three of the men had only one-way tickets and no checked baggage. Police had to forcibly remove the men from the flight, whereupon they were taken into custody. A search found no weapons or explosives, and they were released to continue on their journey. They claimed they were merely ‘imams returning home from an Islamic conference in Minneapolis’. They say they were ‘harassed because of their faith’. In the West, under fair play, we ask ‘Were they victims or provocateurs’? Look at the evidence of the above reportage: they might as well have yelled ‘Bomb!’ All six claimed to be ‘Americans’. So clearly they were aware of heightened security. Surely they knew that groups of Muslim men, flying together while praying to Allah, fitted the modus operandi of the 9/11 hijackers, and would make a pilot considerably nervous? Yet they chose to make a spectacle. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim-rights group, that wasted no time condemning US Airways for ‘prejudice and ignorance’. A stunt to help criminalize ‘Muslim airport profiling’? It’s not the first time Muslim passengers have tried to prove ‘Islamophobia’ and test U.S. nerves and security. There are between 3m and 7m Muslims in the US - it already feels like many more.
(excerpt, conflation, article in USA business journal, November 2006)

The virulent evil of Islam is spreading because we live in the Age of Communication on steroids. What could once be held in secret behind closed doors and hidden by veils is now online for the world to fear, examine, worship, or loathe. Islamic terrorists understand how to use communications all too well, whether it be to intimidate, propagandise or to trigger a cell-phone bomb. The genie is slipping out of the bottle and we are witnessing the results in real time today.
(excerpt, comments, USA blogger, July 2007)

DEMOCRACY: A STEP TOO FAR, TOO QUICK
The hasty promotion of democracy could plunge the Middle East deeper into its dark side (this text arose in 2005. author). The current winds of change there is welcome, a whiff of fresh air in the region. But democracy too hastily could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere (Iraq, for instance - author). Dangerous unintended consequences are the worry. The ‘MB’ established in 1928 is the best organised political force in many Arab countries. It is a radical ‘trans-national’ organisation which (has indicated that it) aims to take over the Islamic world to establish a Caliphate. This ‘religious militarised State’ will be its base to wage war against the ‘infidel West’.
(excerpts, website article, leading Egyptian scholar, June 2005).

Iran’s Ahmadinejad says the (Hidden) Imam gave him a single task: provoking a ‘clash of civilisations’ in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the ‘infidel’ U.S and the West, defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest. Islam has ‘four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with hundreds of millions of Muslim ‘ghazis’ (holy raiders) keen to become martyrs, while the infidels hate to fight.’
(Iran government website, October 2007)

British families threatened with ‘dishonour’ by the ‘uncultural’ activities or ‘inappropriate’ behaviour of their children do not kill their children. The ‘culture of shame’ over the failings or children or relatives was engendered in families in the east end of London 50 years or more ago when she grew up, recalls one British woman. ‘After a scandal it was a case of let us never speak about it again. An uncle’s name was never to be mentioned, or a cousin suddenly had to leave the area. Perhaps they were in prison or the unwed mother’s home, but I’m sure they were never killed by the family.’ She added, ‘This country does not have ‘toxic values’ and we are seeking to correct cultural mistakes of the past, such as confining unmarried mothers to mental homes.’ And again, ‘ Let’s lose the term ‘honour killings’ and call them what they are - the despicable murder of your own flesh and blood. I’ll never understand where people who commit such crimes are coming from, it is not my planet.’
(excerpts, letter, UK national newspaper, January 2008).

(A Muslim women writer said most Muslims are not extremists or separatists). How come Hindus and Sikhs, equally of an Asian immigrant origin, have faced British society with none of these problems and play their useful role in British life with full appreciation of the freedom and opportunities of this country? Why are the Muslims the great ones for carrying grievances? To adapt a Chinese saying: the Brits have lifted up a big rock and dropped it on their own foot. (second email) Once again, here is criticism by a Muslim commentator for daring to examine the toxic phenomenon of the non-integration of Islamic immigrants. And guess what - it is those damn natives’ fault for not finding out enough about the pious joys of Islam. On this day, when our airports are down because of another terrorist plot, spare us your sanctimonious little screed and look again in the mirror. (third email) Any half-wit that can read a paper or watch TV knows that the vast majority of Brits support neither the catastrophic invasion of Iraq nor Israel’s over-reactions (however provoked). Yet a large proportion of British Muslims, interviewed, describe the London murderers as ‘martyrs’. I am no longer optimistic
(email responses to article in UK national newspaper, August 2006)

SHARIA LAW’S CASE IN THE UK
This is not integration, it is segregation and separatism, this is part of the setting up of a modern ‘colony’ in Britain - the Muslim colony. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his admittedly serious, balanced speech (February, 2008) suggested that it was ‘unavoidable’ that parts of the Sharia law code would be accepted as independent (in parallel) with British law (as Jewish Beth Din courts), he in his naivety set back Islam’s fortunes in the short term in the UK (more ‘Islamophobia’ to contend with), but long-term he gave those of its more ‘ambitious’ a stronger platform, a significant boost: behind the scenes, the 100-200 leading Muslim strategists in the country who guide, seriously influence their religion’s status must have rubbed their hands together. All the Muslims - such a small total in our 60 million population - have to do to achieve their political aims is to be quiet, don’t stir the pond further. For a few more years, as they did for a couple of years after 2001 and as they have (relatively) after July 2005. Slowly, around the country, and almost ignoring Britain’s pathetic Government, Islam is strengthening its base in localities, in regions, and more will force their way into our confused, no-principled, spineless EU-ruled Parliament. The Jewish orthodox community’s Beth Din judicial courts (serving 50,000 ultra-orthodox out of 275,000 Jews in the UK) are not independent of British law and these courts have been around for up to 100 years, not like Islam UK’s 40 years (but only becoming visible and questioned since 2001). Sharia ‘law’ - presided over by un-elected ‘elders’ and ‘scholars’ not as our courts are by the UK Government-appointed judiciary - is ‘alien’ to Britain but strongly present. Don’t you imagine otherwise, its local-community and regional ‘courts’ are in being and making decisions, which are accepted ‘voluntarily’ by religious and family dominated ‘found-guilty’ offenders. No-one is sent to prison, fines small and hefty are met by extended-families paying, but there is no ‘after-care’. Banishment (ie sent to ‘Coventry’) is imposed on re-offenders or refusees. ‘We are saving British tax-payers money’ was one comment from a Muslim. But, one can only be filled with pessimism about ‘integration’.
(excerpts, conflations, emails to this website’s author, following the eruption in complaints about the possibility of some UK legally sanctioned Sharia law, February 2008)

The western world would be wise to recognize the realities of Islam, a religion laid down in writing over a millennium ago with violence and oppression at its heart. On the issues of holy war (jihad), apostasy and the treatment of women, the Koran and Sunna are clear. It is the obligation of every Muslim to spread Islam to unbelievers first through dawa, or proselytizing, then through jihad, if the unbelievers refuse to convert. It is the obligation of the unbelievers to accept Islam. Exempted from this edict of conversion are the people of the book: Christians and Jews. Both peoples have a choice. They may adopt Islam and enjoy the same rights as other Muslims, or they may stick to their book and lead the life of a dhimmi (lower citizen). Legally, the rights of the dhimmi are not equal to those of a Muslim. For instance, a Muslim man may take a Jewish or Christian wife, but Jews and Christians are not allowed to marry Muslim women. If a Christian or a Jew kills a Muslim man, they should be killed immediately. In contrast, the blood of a Muslim should never be shed in recompense for the blood of Christians or Jews.
(excerpts, conflation, book, Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2007)

The ultra-conservative Deobandi religious movement, which produced the Taliban in Afghanistan, is believed to be in control of about half Britain’s 1,350 Muslim mosques and centres. Sections of its British followers are reported as preaching hatred of Christians, Hindus and Jews, and telling Muslims not to integrate into British society; instead they are asked to work for separate enclaves governed by Sharia law. Another report said of the 26 Islamic seminaries in the UK, 17 are Deobandi-controlled. A Deobandi offshoot, Tablighi Jamaat is accused of acting as a gateway to militancy. ‘Islamism’ is reported as ‘highly politicised interpretations of Islam and dedicated to the creation of a modern, religious (UK) state’.
(excerpts, conflations, two reports, UK national newspapers, 2006 and 2007)

The family met to discuss killing her, for reasons of family honour, a month before she vanished. She was married when 16, first meeting her Sikh husband on the wedding day. It was an unhappy marriage. She grew into a vivacious woman whose Western ways had annoyed the family. A customs officer at a UK airport, she had started an affair. Aged 27, she had wanted a divorce. A mother of two small children, she vanished during a visit to India for a family wedding. The mother-in-law had boasted about having got rid of her by having a relative strangle her. Her husband and mother-in-law were convicted of the crimes in London.
(excerpts, conflation, news reports, UK national newspapers, July 2007)

Like the wearing of headscarves, itself not specifically required by the Koran, the idea of woman's ‘honour’ (or insult and dis-honour to the family) has become politicised and is increasingly seen as a convenient benchmark measure of a person's level of assimilation and adoption of Western values. ‘Honour killing’ murders have sometimes taken place after a family has reacted violently to their son or daughter taking on the trappings of western culture. A move to a changed cultural environment in a new country caused young people real problems in trying to copy, and many such youngsters were forced to live in two worlds. Suicide and attempted suicide rates were high among Asian boys and girls in many Western countries. Some have wanted to go down a particular career path but their families have refused to allow them such a course. Marriage - enforced, arranged, or mixed - and desire for divorce are all too often behind honour killings. ‘Honour killing is cultural, but it is a culture that is deeply rooted in the Islamic mindset and derives from it’ (said a reader responding to a USA website article, January 2008). Honour killing is neither in the Qur’an nor is it specified in any Hadith but is the natural outcome of Islamic misogyny. In the UK in 2004, three new measures were proposed (in a letter to a UK national newspaper) on positive steps to solution. These included * a code of conduct, signed by Asian community leaders, with an agreed and well-publicised form of whistle-blowing to protect women under threat within their own communities; * extending telephone Help-lines to include services targeted at Asians particularly young people who may be at risk; * the setting up of a Young Asians at Risk Register (YAAR - the Hindi word for friend); *the build-up of an accurate national database; and * training for teachers, police and others on risk awareness and identification.
(excerpts, conflations, several website, media sources, mainly UK, 2004 - 2008)

QUESTIONS ON ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA’
Muslims Against Terror, in Canada, arranged a lecture (January 2008) on ‘Islamophobia’ - ‘the fastest growing irrational fear in the world’. The pre-lecture publicity believed that ‘many world leaders, political leaders, media reporters and producers, religious leaders, secular leaders and countless people’ suffered from it. After the tragedy of 9/11, ‘Islamophobia spread like an epidemic in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries’. The pre-publicity said those who feared lived ‘in constant fear’ from Islam and Muslims, putting ‘millions of Muslims under the microscope’, dangerous for those who suffered (from Islamophobia) and ‘extremely dangerous for Muslims who become targets of hatred, racism and violence of an Islamophobic.’
(excerpt, conflated, MAT website, Canada, December, 2007). (Herewith comments by a correspondent to author, December 5, 2007) : As they would say in Yorkshire, England - nowt wrong! with this pre-publicity. Except that it ignores mentioning directly and openly a) the role that Muslim extremists have played in growth of such perceptions in the West and b) that without such open acknowledgement, Western viewers are quite likely to say, Here we go again - poor old Muslims and Islam crying ‘Victimhood!’

At least 5,000 women worldwide were killed each year as a matter of so-called ‘family honour’, said the United Nations in 2004. ‘Honour killings’ have been reported throughout the world including: Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, USA and Uganda. In Pakistan some 4,000 people mostly women died in honour killings between 2000-2004. In the eight years to 2005, some 45 such killings were committed in Germany. In the UK, some 12 ‘insults to family honour’ killings a year were believed to occur. However, in the two years to 2007, some 30 murder cases in Britain were classified as ‘honour’ killings. None of the world's major religions condone honour-related crimes. But those who are guilty sometimes tried to justify their actions on religious grounds. Honour killings were ‘not (solely) a Muslim problem because they cross all religious lines, but it is a Muslim problem because it also exists in our community’ a UK Muslim spokesman has said. But Islamic scholars and activists argue that there was no ‘honour’ in these killings and to label them as such was ‘just another attempt by Americans and others to vilify Islam.’
(excerpts, conflations, several website, media sources, mainly UK, 2004 - 2008)

IF EXTREMISTS RULED (GOD HELP US)
If revolutionary Islamic extremist groups seized power (in one or more Islam countries) what would be their priorities? They would aim to push Western presence and influence - especially that of the USA - out of Muslim land. Next, the removal of all existing government branded as a ‘foreign puppet’. The next, take power themselves, and renew the historic ‘Caliphate’ under a single, all-powerful dictator. Shar’ia Islamic law, jurisprudence would become the arbiter of every detail of living, abolishing almost all existing ‘man-made’ law and constitution. What would this lead to? It would be a disaster for those living under such a regime. There would be complete isolation of (this sector of) the Muslim world from the non-Muslim world: cultural, economic, military and scientific. (If there were more than one take-over) Societies would develop, huge numbers of people, with little knowledge of science or how it can benefit quality of living. It would not matter to radical Islamists, as they are concerned - primarily - with what happens to people in the after-life, not their lot in this life. (though they concentrate of behaviour in this life! author) So, Muslims would suffer the most, if Islamic extremists seized power.
(excerpt, conflation, email article, by a Muslim, a former oil executive, writer, author, on Canada-com blogsite, July 2006)

The Internet was ‘the West’s new battleground against Islamist extremism’. It was argued that it provided Ideology with the chance to radicalise Westerners who might then initiate home-grown attacks. It has been labelled ‘the new Afghanistan’ as it was the the de-facto training ground’ for terrorists. However, some individual countries in Europe were already moving ahead to step up surveillance of the Internet. A court in Germany has tred a man for posting al Qaeda hate messages, and audio and video recordings by Osama bin Laden in an Internet chatroom for Islamists. The defendant's computer was being monitored for a year and a half by security officials before the man was arrested. In Sweden, the defence minister cited the threat of terrorism in seeking broader powers to monitor e-mail traffic without court orders. Yet we seemed, also, to be looking at another attempt at an EU power grab. Behind one Commissioner’s concern on defeating terrorism was an ambition to create an EU-wide database on terrorism suspects, controlled centrally, to which police in the member states could have access. ‘He who controls the database has the ultimate power’. In a sense, therefore, one could argue that this Commissioner was a bigger threat than the terrorists he claimed to be fighting.
(excerpt, conflation, UK blog, October, 2007)

Large parts of the Islamic world have declared war on the West. Because Muslim countries, to date, have lacked the military and economic capability to wage conventional warfare against us, they (through militant groups and sects and factions) have engaged in vicious acts of terrorism designed to intimidate and undermine Western society. They may soon be in position, through developments in Iran and quite likely Pakistan, to commit acts of nuclear blackmail or actual nuclear warfare. (And just imagine if, a few decades from now, a Muslim majority took control of France or England’s nuclear arsenal, with the capability to destroy large parts of the United States.) The West can either submit to this violence and intimidation, or we can fight back. (The book author) gives a ten-point plan of action internationally (which however lays itself open to rebuttal and denial). ‘Unless the Muslim world suddenly reforms itself - an unlikely prospect given the nature of Islam - I am afraid that civilisational war is into which we are headed in the coming decades, as the Muslim world gains even greater strength and confidence. If the West decides to fight this war, rather than accept Islamic domination as the price of peace (an open question), the bombing and killing are going to be on a scale that makes the current ‘War on Terror’ look like a preliminary skirmish.
(excerpt, conflation, book and website articles and reviews, USA, 2006)

LEAVING THE CULTURE OF SUBMISSION
Leaving Islam is a powerful intellectual accomplishment. People cannot understand the level of indoctrination Muslims undergo for their entire lives. Submission is to your parents, to your teachers, to your local imam. You dare not question. You dare not think differently from the majority, or you will face ostracism at best and death at worse. Bukhari said that whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him. And yet, albeit the freedom to think, it is far from over, for being an ex-Muslim is just the beginning. I have to live as a closet apostate. I still cannot go out and enjoy what life has to give. I still have to pretend I’m a Muslim. It frustrates me how the West tries to appease those who hate us apostates, and want us converted, subjugated, or killed. I am looking at you, CAIR, in the USA. Free will, guaranteed free speech, separation of the church and state - the West has to figure out how to handle the Muslim populations already here.
(excerpts, conflation, an apostate’s story, FaithFreedom.org. March 2007)

STRUGGLE BETWEEN CULTURES
Malaysia is respected as a moderate Islamic nation. With 26 million people, it is celebrating its 50th year of independence, and in the north especially is again debating (apparently strongly. author) how Islamic it should be. The country’s population is 58 per cent Muslim, 22 per cent Buddhist, 11 per cent Christian. (A moderate Islamic nation ? consider this that follows. author) Non-Muslim minorities have managed to co-exist, sometimes uneasily, with the Muslim majority since the civil war and the ethnic tension which marked the birth of independence. However, socialising between Malays and other ethnic groups is today rarer. According to one political leader of the main party in the north, ‘We are becoming upright and clean-living’. His party has banned mini-skirts, chastises unmarried couples, closed down night-clubs, banned most bars, and insisted that a new cinema had separate sections for men and women. ‘Passionate Love Beach’, a favourite beach rendezvous, is now ‘Moonlight Beach’. Malaysia is a Muslim state ! forcefully say the some of the north’s hardliners. ‘We have never been secular because it means separation of Islamic principle with government of the country. We hope to change the mindset so that they (southerners) can live according to Islamic principles too.’ There is a moral enforcement department at state headquarters in the north, and a mocking nickname about the ‘Taleban-lite’ from the ‘lax southerners’.
(excerpts, conflation, world report in UK national newspaper, August 2007)

DEEP INTO ISLAM’S DANGEROUS ‘MEME’
A spectre is haunting Europe and the world. Nationalism, post- Enlightenment philosophy in Europe, no, but a genie that once aggressively spread war across three continents; ideas, like pathogens may spread in epidemic fashion. An idea or a linked constellation of ideas are subject to natural selection like genes. Religions, philosophies, ideologies are examples of such memes; those adapted to the conditions or circumstances of the time persist and spread. Islam is one such meme; a particularly formidable one that once besieged much of the world and has now experienced a second birth. Islam, like other religious traditions taps into some of the deepest yearnings of the human psyche. It gives a meaningful and comprehensive explanation of the universe and ensures fearful believers that piety and acquiescence to the will of the Creator will be rewarded with blissful immortality. The Hadith (interpretations) and the Sira (biography of Muhammad) which are the Muslim equivalents of Christianity’s Acts and Epistles also give religious sanction to violence on the part of Muslims when dealing with unbelievers.
(excerpts, conflations, from the website of Arbulan, part of USA website, 2007)

VERY DARK SUN GLASSES
A niqab is when your body and face are completely covered. Some variations are slits for the eyes so the woman can see, but in Saudi Arabia this was not allowed, so you had to wear a black chiffon scarf over the face, so that the eyes could not be seen through the slits - I likened it to seeing through very dark sun glasses. Why? Men must be protected from fitnah which is temptation, therefore women must not display their ‘charms’ in public.
(excerpt, conflated, website 2007, American woman, married to a Muslim)

In America, many ‘ghetto’ residents are still, essentially, foreigners; integration takes place largely in the next generation, as the children of immigrants go to school, find jobs, and leave the ghetto - and segregation, separatism - behind. Not all, which is apparent (reviewing the segregation-assimilation situation, this website author) in Europe. Among young Norwegians of Pakistani descent, family honour depends largely on ‘not being perceived as Norwegian - as integrated’. From Oslo, there are more direct flights every week to Islamabad than to the US. Enduring segregation is a fact of life in France as it is elsewhere on the continent. Millions of ‘French Muslims’ do not consider themselves French. In Amsterdam, venture beyond the tourist-crowded streets, and sidewalks are crowded with hijab-clad women and as many signs in Arabic as in Dutch. Many Muslims view their neighbourhoods as ‘colonies amid enemy territory’. In France, an official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix's Muslim district ‘out of respect for his declaration that it was Islamic territory’. A Muslim rioter in Århus, Denmark, the other day cried out to police ‘This area belongs to us!’ In Belgium, Muslims in Brussels’ Sint-Jans-Molenbeek area consider it to be under Islamic jurisdiction. In Britain, imams have pressed the government to designate part of Bradford as being under Muslim law (and allegations are made about ‘no go areas for other than Muslims’, this website’s author). In many cities, police have stopped patrolling certain enclaves, the authorities having effectively ceded control to local religious leaders. Many Muslims want to continue to enjoy Western prosperity but are repelled by ‘Western ways and decadence’ so they sent money ‘home’ and travel regularly back to their ‘homelands’. What is tragic is that European authorities have supported it all. Rejecting the American approach - namely, encouraging immigrants to work and integrate (and see themselves as Americans above all) - they have instead helped newcomers to maintain distinct communities and provided benefits that have made it easy for them to stay unemployed. Why did these authorities prefer segregation? Supposedly they were enlightened ‘Multi-culturalists’ who respected differences; for many, the real reason was a profound underlying discomfort with the idea of ‘them’ becoming ‘us’. Naively, they imagined they could preserve their nations' cultural homogeneity while letting in millions of foreigners, and smiling on their preservation and perpetuation of values drastically different from their own countries’. What they have reaped, alas, is a generation of Muslims who see it very differently.
(excerpts, conflated, with thanks, book, While Europe Slept, 2005)

ONLY ONE WAY - THEIRS
They just keep on coming, nothing fazes them, or shames them, or makes them think twice. The day after the (UK sourced) plot to bomb all those planes in mid-air was exposed, I heard a Muslim imam on BBC Radio demanding Shar’ia law for Muslim communities in Britain. This was the next day, remember, when anyone else would think that maybe now would be a good time to shut up, and take some time off from demanding special privileges. But no way, not the Muslim community. My personal favourite right now here in Australia is the TV commercial for Halal food. The meat is ‘guaranteed to come from un-stunned animals’. There is only ever one view - theirs.
(email responses to website report, mufti speech, Australia, October 2006)

The Ramadan meal - ham or nothing
The packed meals for Muslims in a UK prison during the daylight fast of Ramadan were special - some contained ham, banned under the teaching of Islam on pork. Now a group of offended inmates are suing the Prison service for breach of human rights and seeking ‘compensation’, estimated at up to £2 m for the group, about £10,000 each. The prison said a menu, specifically for Ramadan had been incorrectly and inappropriately printed. The spokesman denied any Muslim prisoner had been forced - through hunger - to eat the ham sandwiches at the evening meal in the cells. An inmate who contacted lawyers said the mix-up was spotted when a special nightly menu was circulated to more than 200 Muslims in the jail. It referred to the ‘Feast of Ramadan Meal’ which prisoners eat at night only, and offered three packed meals: salad, cheese or ‘boiled ham’ sandwiches. Complaints were made to prison officers and the answer was ‘This is an honest mistake - it will be rectified’. However, some prisoners - on more than one night - received ham sandwiches only. Some complained again, but were told ‘that is all there is’. One said I was told to ‘….. off’. One said it was ‘ham or nothing for four nights’. Some were so hungry they ‘were forced to eat the ham sandwiches’. A copy of the offending menu was smuggled out of the jail, from which the story spread.
(conflation of several reports, UK media, October 2007)

In Saudi Arabia, every breath, every step we took was infused with concepts of purity or sinning, and with fear. Wishful thinking about the ‘peaceful tolerance’ of Islam cannot interpret away this reality. Hands are still cut off, women are still enslaved and stoned, just as was decided centuries ago. The kind of thinking I saw, in Saudi Arabia, in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with liberal values and human rights. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of shame and honour. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam.
(excerpt, conflation, book, Infidel, 2007)

FREEDOM TOO PRECIOUS TO ABANDON
Some of most diehard proponents of freedom are the most dangerous unwitting accomplices of liberty’s enemy - Islam. Muslims demand surrender to ‘the will and dictates of Allah’ as revealed by Muhammad and recorded in the Qur’an. This non-negotiable surrender to Islam requires the individual as well as the society to disenfranchise themselves of many of the fundamental and deeply cherished human rights. Islam considers itself all three branches of government. It enacts laws as it sees fit, adjudicates laws, and executes as it deems. Islam is anathema to the provisions of the USA First Amendment. Islam proclaims itself as the only legitimate religion for the entire world, grudgingly granting minor recognition to Judaism and Christianity from whom it has liberally plagiarized many of its dogma. Islam actively suppresses other religions, there is not a single church or synagogue in the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia, while thousands of mosques dot the tolerating and welcoming non-Moslem lands. (In Egypt) if you are an agnostic, an atheist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Baha’i, you are forced to perjure yourself to receive the indispensable ID card.
(excerpts, conflation, website article, November 2007, Iranian writer, essayist, novelist living in USA)

She is a Muslim convert to Christianity. And the sentence on her, in her absence from Iran, by the Revolutionary Islamic Court, was death by stoning. She was ‘guilty of apostasy and evangelising Christianity’. Due to be deported back to Iran, after seeking asylum in Britain for the last three years, she was given a temporary reprieve just three hours before her enforced flight. It is Britain’s policy not to deport to countries where torture is practised, and a government department will now look further into the case.
(excerpt, report, UK national newspaper, July 2007)

DRESS LIKE ‘DARTH VADER’ ACCEPTABLE?
It is a passport-control desk, to vet entry into Britain. Presumably female, it/she approaches the passport officer in full ‘Darth Vader’ Islamic face-veil, only the eyes show. A passport is proffered, the officer looks and asks ‘Is this a photo of you’? It/she nods, wordlessly. No further questions. The entity: male, female? enters this country. This ludicrous procedure contrasts with the intrusive interrogations I and others, British subjects, face, returning legitimately to our own country.
(excerpt, Columnist, UK Sunday national newspaper, August, 2007)

GOD’S LAW, NOT MAN-MADE LAW
‘Free’ elections, in areas of Muslim countries, attract the anti-democracy terrorist slogan ‘From box to box’. It is meant to warn: ballot box to coffin box. Voting is a matter of life and death. There is a nebulae of organisations that have vowed to kill not only those who stand for election but also those who vote. In the past ten years, thousands of people - from politicians to ordinary voters - have been murdered by Islamists in (voting areas of) Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Islamist opposition to democracy is based on the claim that allowing men to legislate would be a form of 'sherk' associating Man with God, who is the 'sole and ultimate legislator'. Man-made law cannot rival God-made Shariah (law), is the warning.
(excerpt, conflation, USA website, December 2006)

A respected Islamic apostate scholar, early in 2006 on a UK blogsite, described the Islamic ‘strategy’ (as allegedly sketched out by the Islamic Council of Europe) for achieving success in Britain over the next decades. The basis was non-integration, Muslim concentration and isolation, ensuring the Muslim voice and demands attained a disproportionate weight in terms of government and media attention. ‘Do not integrate, do not dilute your presence, concentrate in particular community areas until a majority is achieved and local institutions come to reflect Islamic structures in education, food, advertising and so on.’ There were already areas now almost totally Muslim. Then push the government to recognise Sharia Law for Muslim communities. ‘This would be backed up by claims that it is racist or Islamophobic or violated the rights of Muslims to deny them Sharia Law’. He believed we would be seeing (official) implementation of Sharia in some parts of the UK within ten years ie by 2016. A recent poll (2006) showed 40 per cent UK Muslims supported the call, 41 per cent opposed it. The Islamic strategy was aided by ‘the UK Establishment’s multicultural ethic’ (and its fears of being called racist). This had had the effect of ‘inordinately amplifying’ the Muslim voice in the UK; a community that currently amounted to about three per cent of the whole population was ‘able to drive policy agenda and debate’ to a much greater extent that numbers alone would suggest. for instance the Muslim campaign called for more state-funded Muslim schools, corresponding to Islamic Council policy.
(excerpts, conflated, UK blogsite, February 2006)

HIDING GOD’S GLORY
The Muslim niqab, eyes only showing of the body, is an extreme that means invisibility, no personality, asking us to recognise and respond only to the ‘soul’, the link with humanity, God, of God, via the eyes. They can be cool, cold, suspicious, secretive, anxious, even hating. Or they can be warm, welcoming, receptive, compassionate, loving. It asks too much, of the normal (Western?) human being who is faced by this niqab. It forces us, who do not believe the face should be hidden, covered up, into non-acknowledgement, a turning away from. Half the capacity for communication is gone, not present, even driven away. Far from ‘protecting’ those wearing the niqab, or maintaining ‘modesty’ or displaying their beliefs, it closes life down. Man- (or woman-) made, though not demanded by the Holy Koran, it has the effect of ensuring that ‘Life’ in a way becomes invisible. God’s glory cannot shine out as it does in (the best of) Mankind.
(excerpts, conflated, Columnist quote, UK national newspaper, September 2007 and email to author from friend)

(excerpts, comments on news reports, Muslim’s shop refusal to sell proscribed goods, USA website, March 2007: S= support, C=critical): (S) ‘I appreciate your honesty and willingness, as a Muslim, to comment on such a touchy topic. You remind us that there are Muslims out in the world who aren't necessarily fundamentalist and who may be unfairly treated because of others’. (C) I just cannot for the life of me understand why we Muslims tends to make things difficult for ourselves. It's bad enough lots of people all over the world have negative impressions about Islam but must we instead of enlightening and be accommodating choose to prove them right. (C) Either you are plain lazy and unwilling to do a honest work, to take care of and provide for your family, or you are just looking for an excuse to get laid off so you can sue your employer, using your religion as the reason you got laid off. (C) Instead of hiding behind Islam, find another line of work whereby you don't have to touch pork or any other related items that Islam forbids us from touching or eating. (C ) Muslim immigrants have to be taught the ‘rules of the game’ when negotiating America's social and economic realities. (S) For the sake of the country, we all have to figure out how all of our people are able to express a common identity. If some Muslims are unable to make a contract with American society, they will not succeed socially and economically. They will remain isolated and live in ghettos. (S) To blindly embrace ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural sensitivity’ as civic virtues is sheer nonsense. Different cultures are not always equal - some are better, more civil, and more free than others. (S) Our Muslim friends, if they choose not to perform certain jobs, they are entitled to do so. But they must understand they are also limiting their social and economic progress for themselves and their children. (S) The best solution is to provide comprehensive reality based education about modern life for immigrants. They, therefore, can decide for themselves what they will choose to do or not do. (C) I will not shop in a store where an employee does not want to check-out my purchases. I seem to recall that the Civil Rights movement brought about the end to discrimination in areas like this. (C) Uneducated immigrants are some of the only people who will work for this (particular store group’s) pittance of a wage. (S) Many Muslims themselves see this as a wild misinterpretation of Islam - probably a big growth Break-room culture rather than a deep seated political movement prepared to claim America and scour the land of infidels. (C) Look for the Muslim cashier, present them with our trolley with £100 worth of mainly pork items, then when they refuse to touch the pork item, loudly tell them to cancel the order and call for the duty manager. When these retailers have to start spending more time quickly putting perishable items back on shelves, they will maybe wake their employee up to the fact that it is just part of the job. (S) I guarantee you if the situation were reversed, and it was a Catholic refusing to scan condoms because they believed in abstinence, you idiots wouldn't have an objection. Then you would say, America is the land of freedom and people have the right to believe and practice what they believe. But because she is Muslim, you are all immediately against her. I guess being an American now means being an intolerant, racist bigot who is biased by the media to be brain-washed.
(excerpts, comments on news reports, Muslim’s shop refusal to sell proscribed goods, USA website, March 2007)

Muslims comprise 2 m out of Britain’s 61 m population and Muslims make up 12 per cent of UK prisoners. Jailed Islamic terrorists are being attacked in prison and Ministers in the government are considering plans for an all-Muslim prison. Muslim terrorists in jail, say critics of such a plan, must not be given special status. A fire in a cell, a scalding with boiling water, and death threats have occurred. Non-Muslim prisoners have protested about special provision of Muslim prayer facilities and diets. Lawyers have protested about ‘curbs on imprisoned radicals meeting together’, and called for ‘prisoner of war’ status for jailed fanatics. A former Army officer now an MP riposted that ‘They are not soldiers, they are not warriors, they have simply broken the law’. A Prison Service spokesman said ‘We will do what is necessary to protect them, special conditions are not intended’ and added ‘Any prisoner adjudged in danger can be moved to a Vulnerable Prisoners Unit’. Email comments included: Under no circumstances should they get separate prisons. The public will be outraged at special treatment. They are alive, and lucky to have got only prison sentences. They may now think twice about trying to murder innocent men, women and children when they know the kind of reception they will get in prison. They are in prison because they have attacked society. Why should society pay for privileged places for them. They should be spread throughout the prisons. They should not be kept concentrated in one place where they can plot and plan more terrorist activities. That this can be even considered shows that Britain is a pathetic shell of its once proud self.
(excerpts, conflations, news stories in UK national newspapers, and email responses, July 2007)

TAKING THE (ST) MICHAEL
A Muslim checkout woman assistant, at Marks & Spencer, the leading High Street stores in the UK, refused to handle a book of Bible Stories in January 2008, claiming it was ‘unclean’. As is now becoming habitual at many chains, a non-Muslim assistant was called to serve the woman customer who, on learning why the first assistant had walked away, was deeply upset and insulted. A store spokesperson said it was ‘all a misunderstanding’. Can you imagine what would have happened if another assistant said she was Christian and refused the sale of a Koran saying it was ‘unclean’ or a ‘foreign religious book’? There would have been hell to play. The assistant would have been sacked, the police would have been called, the story would have led been headlined in the Media. The Columnist added, ‘I wonder if this intolerant woman realises that the firm M&S was founded and has been run by some of Britain’s most prominent Jewish businessmen?’
(excerpt, conflation, Columnist, UK national newspaper, January 2008)

Most Muslims are not terrorists. Nevertheless, it is clear that many Muslims, including some living in the West, sympathize with terrorists and support the global jihad. The jihadist impulse is found throughout Islamic theology, history, and culture. Islam divides the world into the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam), where Islamic law (Sharia) reignes supreme, and the House of War (Dar al-harb), where Sharia does not yet prevail. This religious-political project - and not the PC (politically-correct) troika of poverty, tyranny, and discrimination - is the root of jihad. The gulf that exists between Western culture and Islamic culture, the growing size and influence of the Muslim world portends a disastrous future for us all. The underlying demographic trends, including low indigenous, native birth rates and rising Muslim immigration, are steadily transforming Europe into an Islamic stronghold, Eurabia.
(excerpts, conflations, a reviewer’s interpretations, comments on a book, published in USA, November 2006)

ONLY SEPARATION WITH NON-PERSONS ?
I was in the supermarket when a Muslim woman appeared next to me. She was dressed in full hijab and niqab (the full complement now being known in the West as a nijab): black clothing down to her casual black slip-on shoes and of course the full face veil. She had beautiful eyes. I shopped for a while in the same area as her, stationery. She seemed in her own empty space, no-one passed close by her. I saw her later in a check-out queue. The checkout woman was lovely, middle-aged and very pleasant and chatty to everyone. From two checkouts away, I saw she had no words for the lady-in-black. What can you say? Muslim women observe, complain that they become ‘non-persons’ when (for true, deep permanent ‘religious’ reasons or other more ‘worldly’ half-political persuasions?) they don the hijab and niqab. The indigenous Brit says more that we are begin to overflow with immigrants and if any speak English or even pidgin’ English then a passing conversation at checkout is possible. But not faced by a ‘bat in daylight’ or a ‘costumed Darth Vader’ as several acid newspaper columnists have described the ‘hijab-niqab effect’. The ‘effect’ they mention just helps to build up Muslim ‘victimhood’ in this UK. If more and more young Muslim girls take to the ‘niqab’ - whether religion, fashion, brain-washed - then the supermarket will be like a world in parallel, people glancing off each other, little chance of even a smile.
(guest observations, collated, author dinner, November 2007)

One of the world’s oldest democracies, Switzerland is at the centre of Western Europe’s most divisive political struggle and debate: will it embrace an increasingly multicultural society, or retreat into social isolation, in the efforts of much of its population to preserve eroding traditional identity. It is of greatest concern to those in Switzerland who oppose the volume immigration - from societies with no history of democracy. The opposers are, surprise, surprise, called racists and xenophobes. One in five people in Switzerland are foreign born (a percentage it is true from other European countries who have moved to the country for lifestyle, tax or other reasons). Some 1.5 million people are immigrants, out of the country’s seven million population. And 70-80 per cent of those in jail are of immigrant heritage. As with all other European populaces, the ‘indigenous’ long-established resident families of Switzerland have never been asked about the immigration - unplanned, unrestrained - encompassing many religious and ethnic, mainly uneducated, unskilled and - some complain - ‘entitlement-expectation’ newcomers. Islamic radicalism is rearing its head. The country is facing non-assimilation and polarisation and intolerance which is increasingly, potentially violent (as has occurred in 2007-08). The situation may tear Switzerland apart.
(excerpts, conflated, from news reports and comment, websites and UK national newspapers, autumn 2007, January 2008)

Some seem unable to grasp the difference between Islam and Islamism. They can always accuse opponents (those who suggest actions against extremists) of racism and Islamophobia and pretend that the threat of the BNP ( in the UK) is as strong as that from Islamist groups. (comment by weblog author about the book just published)
(The book’s author says) We need more rehabilitation centres for extremists where we should offer them the opportunity to experience traditional Islam under the supervision of mainstream Muslim scholars. Most extremists have never met a genuine Muslim scholar. Serious rehabilitation programmes would perhaps allow extremists to see the errors of their way. It worked for me
(excerpt, conflation, weblog, and book by author who ‘went through the Islamist experience and then understood how wrong it was’. July 2007)

Hamas has a children’s programme on TV. It now has a ‘homicidal rabbit’ (a bad person or a coward) which says ‘I will eat Jews’. There have been other killer-animals via Hamas on TV. This is indoctrination of Palestinian children. There are various ways in which British and EU tax-payers’ money finds its way to Hamas, which is promoting Hate education and violence. The messages are produced in text-books, which promote martyrdom, support killing of apostates (those leaving Islam) and ‘patriots’ (insurgents killing ‘Western’ troops in Iraq. And ‘Palestinian Authority’ propaganda (against the West). The books show ‘little tots totting very big guns’, excuses children killing children, use a psychotic mouse and a killer bee. Now we have the homicidal rabbit. One thing is certain, the money the Brits and EU provide as aid does not go to those contributing to peace and stability in the Middle East region.
(excerpt, conflation, EU Referendum blogsite, UK, February 2008)

Al-Qaeda was described as ‘the most brutal and the most bankrupt of movements’ after human bombs killed 70 in two separate markets in central Baghdad in February 2008. It was said the bombers were two women recruits with Down’s Syndrome. Women can avoid thorough searches at checkpoints because of Islamic sensitivities, and four have carried out suicide bombings since November 2007. Involving women in militant violence violates religious taboos in Iraq. It is believed the extremists opposing the Americans are recruiting females and youths. ‘I thought we had achieved real security in Baghdad but we were wrong’, said one store owner.
(excerpts, conflations, news report, UK national newspaper, February 2008)

Since the late 1970's, Islam, the initial source of Pakistan's unity not to say raison d'etre, has become a divisive element. Bhutto's murder took place on the Day of Ghadir, the most important annual festival of Shia Muslims. It marks the election of Imam Ali as the Prophet Muhammad's successor 14 centuries ago. Was Bhutto, whose Iranian mother was born Shia, also paying for Pakistan's slide into sectarianism? Islam has become an instrument of oppression in the hands of groups peddling perverted versions of the faith. Pakistanis fight and kill one another over rival interpretations. By contrast, attachment to pluralist politics represents the principle factor of unity in Pakistan today. Undermine that and you threaten the very legitimacy of the state. The terrorist who killed Benazir believed that Islam is worth killing for. Benazir proved that democracy is worth dying for.
(excerpt, article, UK national newspaper, January 2008)

The charges, in the court in Canada said the men had ‘ knowingly participated in a terrorist group and either received or provided terrorist training in several Canadian locations’. A federal official said there would be ‘some serious reflection in government and security circles about how young people raised in Canada could allegedly conspire to commit such crimes. Most of them went through the school system here. They’re not just off the plane. So there will be some heavy questioning going on and the big issue is going to be societal’. A Muslim shop-owner feared that non-Muslim customers would stop patronising businesses in the area that were run by Muslims. ‘It is going to hurt our businesses and our life’. Excusing his ‘prejudice in action’, a militant-against-Islam said, ‘Of course it is prejudice - have we not been given not only a right, but an obligation, to exercise such prejudice when it is in the interests of our future and our safety, and the sanctity of our nation? It’s either this or (accepting) violence against us’. If the indigenous refused to ‘give our money (to Muslim shops and businesses) to their community then they, in those communities, may be forced to reform and assimilate - this is the chance for moderate Muslims to give more than lip-service to rooting out extremists.’ (It brought an instant email response countering such an argument): ‘How many people do they think you will starve by boycotting Muslim businesses? Will Muslims stop buying from each other if non-Muslims stop? Will Muslims be forced to stay and starve, or like any other citizens, if their businesses fold, will they not be able to move on to some other place? Does your boycott plan signal the death and destruction of all Muslims? No, it just follows the market and the law of supply and demand. The lack of rational deduction here is really getting so tiresome.)
(excerpts, conflation, email arguments, not-pro-Muslim website, 2006 repeated 2007)

It is not the West that is most threatened in this (Danish Cartoons) crisis. The voices of moderation in the Muslim world are the ones that are being intimidated and silenced. Those few journalists and leaders who have spoken out against the rioting have been vilified and assailed, and even jailed. According to reports, 11 journalists in five Islamic countries face prosecution for printing some of the cartoons, even when their purpose was to condemn them. In most of these cases, the legal action represents attempts by cowed authorities to appease the Islamists. But the effect - in Yemen, Jordan and other countries - has only been to give extremists a dollop of legitimacy, and to encourage them to turn up the heat. That, in turn, increases the perception of a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and the West. It is time for moderate Muslims to abandon the illusion that they can placate the Islamists by straddling the fence. It is they who must explain to their people that the cartoons were an isolated incident, and not the face of hostile crusaders. It is they who must make it clear to their people that blowing up mosques, beheading hostages and strapping on belts of explosives are far, far greater evils than a few drawings in a distant paper. They must do so because their future is at stake — not Denmark's.
(excerpt, leader column, New York Times, February 2006)

Why is Britain so shocked that ‘doctors’ should aspire to be mass murderers ?
(Glasgow Airport attempted fire bombing) Modern history is crawling with examples of physicians who have turned their healing hands to hate. Doctors for their own sanity must be able to ‘detach themselves’ from suffering and death. They possess self-belief, making them more dangerous if mind is perverted. As Sherlock Holmes told Dr Watson: ‘When a doctor does wrong he (she) is the first of criminals. For he has knowledge and he has nerve.’
(excerpt, conflation, Columnist, UK national newspaper, July 2007)

HISTORY, PUBLIC SYMPATHY, THE FUTURE
With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after WW I, European officials at the time had little understanding of Islam. Had they been able to look into the last half of the twentieth century, they would have been astonished by the fervour of the Wahhabi faith in Saudi Arabia, by the passion of religious belief in warring Afghanistan, by the continuing vitality of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Sunni world, and by the recent Khomeini upheaval in Shi'ite Iran. This quote from the ‘Bible’ of mid-eastern studies published in 1989 shows there are resources available which are clearly much ignored. Deeply rutted tracks link Islamic extremism now called Terrorism with the Wahhabi fundamentalists of Saudi Arabia. Tight, stark and factual. I am a huge admirer of the US freedom and democracy, which survived in the 20th century only because of (decisive) American actions and (clear-cut) values. But today, the world is too complex and dangerous for pious simplicities and arrogant unilateralism (that our political leadership shows). Put simply, the US government fails to understand the (long-established) basis of US power, mis-specifies US objectives and is incompetent in executing its intentions. As a result, the position of the US - and so of the West - is worse, in significant respects, than it was the day after September 11, 2001. Then, a huge proportion of humanity viewed the US as the victim of an outrage. Then, it had the support of all its allies. Now it can rely on the public's sympathy in very few ways.
(excerpts, conflated, from condensed commentary articles by Milo Clark, USA, May 2004)

The more that Islamic extremism spreads in UK communities, the harder it would be to maintain the kind of society that the vast majority of indigenous and peaceful immigrants wished to live in. The new Head of M15 security services in Britain went on, ‘(Would-be) terrorists are targeting the young in this country. They are grooming, indoctrinating and radicalising young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism. We have seen individuals as young as 15 and 16 implicated in terrorist-related activity’. He added that a year ago, 2005-06, M15 had identified about 1,600 individuals who were suspected of posing a direct threat. Today (November 2007) that figure was at least 2,000. It was his department’s forecast that ‘al-Quaeda has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the UK.’ There was no sign of it reducing.
(excerpt, news reports, UK national newspaper and broadcasts, UK, November 2007)

They promoted martyrdom and holy war through online forums and websites. All three were students who lived with their parents in London and Kent. We expect suicide bombers to be uneducated social outcasts who have been twisted by fanatics. But the reality can be very different.
(excerpts, comments, terrorism case, UK national newspaper, July , 2007)

War (by the West against Islamism) is fought using a combined arms theory; not just land, sea, air but also intelligence, propaganda, covert operations. Do you bomb Saudi Arabia and watch oil prices go through the roof, and our (Western) economies driven down to the floor? Do you assassinate a Saudi prince and in particular his oil wells for funding al-Qaeda? Anti-insurgency campaigns from history share common factors. The successful ones are pro-active over re-active. We will have to ignore political and other outcries.
(excerpt, conflation, reader’s response, USA war theory website, 2004)

The followers of these (small) aggressive Islamist groups in the UK do not care a stuff about what ‘moderate spokespersons of ‘Islam in the UK’ think. They (mostly young people) do not care a stuff what their (old generation) parents think. They do not give a stuff for what is taught in mosques. They read their Scripture and take their lead from that. They take their lead from the violence contained therein. They do not care for democracy, authority or Western values. They might express themselves more extremely than most Muslim young do, but their words are echoed, in all of Britain’s ghettoes.
(excerpt, conflation, analysis, report, UK news report, 2007)

Honour killings arising in the UK’s Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities are hindered by ‘political correctness preventing action against such crimes’ and by the fact that the Government ‘is still not taking honour crime seriously’. About 12 women a year are believed killed in honour crimes each year, though Social Cohesion think-tank researchers fear the real total is much higher. Voluntary, charitable Shelters to which they flee are seeing more women affected by ‘honour-based violence’. The women are attacked for forming ‘inappropriate relationships, wanting to go to University, or listening to Western music’. Teenage daughters are being withdrawn from schools by families fearing education and ‘men brought up here, in Britain, want ‘freshies’ that is, women ‘uncontaminated’ by ideas of independence.
Teachers, police and councils are ‘afraid to take action for fear of being accused of ‘racism’, a recent research report claims. Two other allegations are made: that women are being betrayed by community leaders who still believe ‘those who break traditional taboos deserve to be punished’; and that police, Asian government workers and even taxi drivers are ‘returning women to the domestic abuse they want to escape from’. A Refuge in Derbyshire said, ‘Returning them can be a matter of life or death for these girls.’ A Columnist said ‘We are one step away from Islamic communities policing themselves’.
(excerpts, conflations, news reports, UK national newspapers, February 2008)

We in this country, UK, are our own worst enemies, because our tolerant nature is seen as weakness by fundamentalist Muslims. They are continually testing the waters and pushing the boundaries back and we are allowing this to (continue to) happen. After working in Muslim countries for 23 years, 18 of them in the Middle East, I say criticism of some Muslims as extreme is right. We had a Muslim friend from here on a visit and he attended a local mosque. He vowed he would never return there again. When asked why, he stated that what was being said by the imam was most provocative, and would never be allowed in any mosque in Oman. Us (Britain) allowing such aggressive talk was, he said, most surprising
(excerpt, letter by Merseyside reader in UK national newspaper, January 2008)

BORN-AGAIN MUSLIM VIRGINS
Today, the insistence, demand for the ‘virgin bride’ is still part of the strict Islamic religion. Her family moved from Pakistan to Britain two generations ago (the 1970’s). She was born in Britain, and grew up in an affluent middle-class family, her father an accountant, she and six sisters raised in a five-bedroom house in Birmingham, midlands Britain. She, now a UK university graduate and well experienced in ‘Western’ life - good and bad - has just paid for surgery (£2,000) to ‘restore her virginity’. She is one of the UK’s ‘born-again Muslim virgins’. She has undertaken the ‘restoration’ to disguise her sex relationship with a Western man, so that her life may well be saved (possibly forfeited if shown not a virgin on her wedding night) when she marries a good Muslim Pakistani man shortly (in the Spring 2008). She is now, having had the operation, ‘fit again’ to marry according to Islamic tradition. (The need is that her blooded wedding-night bed-sheets are handed to her in-laws to come, in Pakistan, as proof of her virginity ‘that I am pure’. If not the marriage may be/will be annulled). And discovery of her secret might be so damning that her own strictly religious (Islamic) relatives might kill her rather than face ‘public shame’. ‘One of my fanatical cousins or uncles might kill me in revenge, to purge them (the family) of my sins’ - those ‘sins’ perhaps a too-harsh reflection of the laxer, permissive attitudes of her and her (white, Western) contemporaries.
(excerpts, conflation, from two-page article based on interviews with a Muslim woman, UK national newspaper, December 2007)

ISLAMIST FINANCE
An American financial journal and its parent financial institution have been criticised for reporting on Muslim Shariah finance with ‘seemingly no understanding of its place in the political ideology of Islamism’. They both are ‘effectively legitimising Islamist ideology by defining Shariah as ‘Islamic law’ and also by developing financial vehicles based on that ideology - one that is not shared by many Muslim specialists who view Shariah law as neither ‘Islamic’ nor compatible with the norms of modern society. ‘One does not expect ideological issues to be the strong point of financial reporters’ says one commentator. ‘In 2007, this financial journal and its parent institution appear to have been persuaded by Wahhabists and Islamists that political Islam is a religion not a political ideology’. Another commentator says, ‘Far from being an innocent venture in free market capitalism, Islamic finance was conceived and is practised as one of the key instruments of the militant Islamist movement in its struggle against the West’.
(excerpts, conflation, article, USA website, November 2007)

Western scholars and authors have adopted the strategy of taking Islam's claims more or less at face value, according to several readers, responding to a USA article. Such undue deference, coupled with a fear of retribution, has led to a situation where even a relatively generous treatment of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, such as that composed by a French Middle East scholar has been considered too controversial on many campuses in the West, and has put distributors or readers in real physical danger if offered for discussion. If you ‘followed the money’, you'll discover quickly that the intimidation continues. Oil-rich fundamentalist Arab regimes, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have put big money into spreading their version of Islamic history. Take two donations to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization that has, it is alleged, participated in its share of questionable activities. In June 2006, it was announced that a Saudi Prince, supposedly a friend of America, would fund a $50 million CAIR project ‘to create a better understanding of Islam and Muslims in America’. Surely the prince, who had scores of American advisers, knew how controversial CAIR was? Yet his money will ‘interpret and make accessible to Americans Saudi militant Wahhabism’. Another multi-million-dollar donation to CAIR has come from a Dubai Foundation, also supposedly a friend of America. We can not afford to put up with such hypocrisy. The West is engaged in a major confrontation with Islamic terrorism, in which much of the Islamists' ammunition is now coming from the charities, schools, teachings, and treasuries of Saudi Arabia and oil-rich sources in the Arabian Gulf. There is no need to hold America's door open to them.
(excerpts, conflation, readers email views, article, USA newspaper, autumn 2007)

My colleague (the imam she is facing on the programme) has said that he never offends other people’s beliefs. What civilisation on the face of this earth allows HIM to call other people by names they did not choose for themselves? Once he calls them ‘Ahl Al-Dhimma’ (those unbelievers whose property has been taken by the Islamic rulers), another time he calls them ‘the People of the Book’ (Jews and Christians, allowed to practise their religion under Islamic rule), yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians ‘those who incur Allah’s wrath’.
(excerpt, Wafa Sultan interview, al-Jazeera, February 2006)

Who told you (to the imam) they (Jews, Christians) are ‘the People of the Book’? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today, 2006, are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them ‘those who incur Allah’s wrath’? Or ‘those who have gone astray’? You come here and say that ‘your religion’ commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others? I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the super-natural. But I respect others’ right to believe in it. The imam: Are you a heretic? If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you blaspheme against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran
(excerpt, conflation, Wafa Sultan interview, al-Jazeera, February 2006)

The Jews have come from the tragedy of the Holocaust and forced the world to respect them with their knowledge not with their terror, and with their work, not their crying and yelling (like Islam’s extremists. author). Fifteen million (Jewish) people scattered throughout the world united and won their rights through knowledge and work. Humanity owes much of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to (the work of) Jewish scientists. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew blow up a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, burn down an embassy or kill a Muslim
(excerpt, Wafa Sultan interview, al-Jazeera, February 2006)

AS WOLVES AND TIGERS
John Wesley, the famed British preacher (1703-91), was not a fan of Islam (gathered from this perhaps extreme viewpoint): ‘Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are razed to their foundations and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once gardens of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind’.
(quote given by modern respondent, to an article, on a religious website, July, 2007)

‘Bigamy is a criminal offence in Britain, punishable by up to seven years in prison. No-one seems to have told the Department of Works and Pensions,’ said the Columnist (in a UK national newspaper). ‘It has decreed that men with more than one wife can receive benefit for all of them. Islamic law permits up to four wives, and the new rules allow someone to claim for himself and his first wife, and lesser amounts for the other three’, he explained. ‘Who voted for that?’ And he had other comments, ‘If a Methodist for instance tried to claim benefits for four wives, he’d have his collar felt. But increasingly, Muslims are exempted from the laws which apply to the rest of us’. And his final comments, ‘Bring on Sharia law’. Mentioning beheadings, hands chopped off and stoning to death for adultery, ‘We are going to hell in a handcart.’
(excerpts, conflated, Columnist, UK national newspaper, February 5, 2008)