This is a long one. I've been away for a few days - I have a bit to make up :)

Freedom of speech is the only hope we have. To stake everything on its preservation really isn't being shrill. It's simply acknowledging reality. New Zealand is following exactly the same path - with exactly the same players in exactly the same roles - taken by our more accessible Western contemporaries.

It's time for us to get engaged.

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Well it has been an odd few days hasn't it?
The visit of Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern has done us an invaluable service here in Enzed. Many of us wondered how our news media, academics and politicians would stand up against international standards. Now we know. Media & politicians slot right in there with Sweden, Britain and Canada at the extreme end of the reality deniers. The academics are not doing much better either. As overseas, academics who disagree with our trajectory mostly do not seem to have the courage of their convictions and instead become part of the problem.

Boy are we in trouble.

Enough has been on display from these groups to confirm our worst suspicions: many academics and politicians and the overwhelming number of journalists - the people who have control of information, the means of making laws and of shaping minds - have not the slightest clue what they are doing when it comes to ideas from outside their cosy little fish bowls. They are ideologues, not thinkers. "Islam is a religion of Peace" isn't a concept to be investigated, it's an unimpeachably veracious statement.

Members of our media, academy and politicians can't even agree with the theoretical proposition that people with ideas they disagree with should be allowed to publicly state them.

What?

Can't they hear themselves? Have any of them ever been to a tertiary institute? You deal with understanding new ideas all day there guys. Or at least you're supposed to.

Together, these groups have managed to engender within me what a lifetime of increasing pressure from many sides could not: after observing all this I truly felt ashamed to be a man, to be white and to be a New Zealander.

Presented with ideas backed up with overseas experience and research all so many of our "thought leaders" could thoughtfully lead us into was baseless name-calling:"Racists! Provocateurs!" Cries of "Shut them up! Close them down!" were the most thoughtful and nuanced responses these people could come up with. There was an early interview (which I can't seem to find now) with NZ TV of which we were shown a selected few minutes. Here's the full hour. Watch it and decide for yourself if the Canadians are really so hateful. ​

In all these years I have argued that what has happened "over there" could happen here and now I have my suspicions absolutely confirmed. Just take a look at Tommy Robinson: his torment, his solitary confinement, his weight loss and anguish. The British State did this to him. It is apparent now that our State is just as likely to do it to us should we make the mistake of disagreeing with them and being proved right. This will happen.

Some exceedingly silly arguments also came forth from the general public, such as this beauty: "No one is denying them free speech. They have Youtube channels, anyone can hear them there!" But you're going to do your best to ensure no one can hear them anywhere else aren't you? Would you like me to treat you like that too? Hey it's OK - get a Youtube channel, everyone can hear you there. Just don't show your face around here or there'll be trouble.

Somehow this doesn't strike me as the future free from fascism our fathers envisaged when they stormed the beaches at Normandy.

Thankfully there was a quick response to the initial deplatforming by a group called the Free Speech Coalition. A group of divergent political backgrounds who recognised immediately what was at stake here. Thank God for this. They have however been stigmatised as "rich white men", the fount of all evil - I'm not exaggerating, watching the media this last week shows many influential people really do believe this.

Happily, in the course of this fiasco, I discovered some clever people here in NZ who raised some real issues - often humorously couched. Have a look at this video: "Anti-communists protest alt-Left radicals" and see if you can figure out why the suggested scenario would never take place even though the principles are identical. By the way, our Prime Minister -  the former President of the International Union of Socialist Youth who spoke at the 2009 International Union of Socialist Youth where she addressed her fellows as "Comrades" - is proud of her countrymen for standing against the Canadians: "I think we're hostile to their views . . . They're here because there were no grounds to block them being here . . . I think you'll see from the reaction that they have had from New Zealanders that their views are not those that are shared by this country and I'm quite proud of that."

Uh-huh.

So they weren't saying or doing anything illegal, "we" just don't like what they say. They're here because "we" couldn't find even a tissue paper thin pretense to stop them.

Well that's encouraging.

But fair enough on the "we" thing, I hear politicians all over the world using the "we" when talking about national values & identity. Although . . . doesn't that indicate that "we" have a differing set of values and a different identity than others? How does this not make some of  those others feel lesser and therefore bad? Isn't that wrong? I mean the Saudis still cut a few heads off each week for crimes such as leaving Islam. Does our PM not perceive that her white privilege is offensive to the many Saudis who agree with this practice? Pretty judgmental thing to say isn't it? How dare she?

Some people called the Auckland Peace Action Group were very involved with protesting the visit of our two Canadian friends. What is this Auckland Peace Action Group I hear you say? Well, watch another video of Rachel Poulain's and all will be revealed (spoiler: the name Antifa appears). They have such a nice name, with "Peace" in it, it seems this was enough to stop just about every single journalist from looking them up on Google. Couldn't be a blind spot could it? No? 

And journalists are so offended that people don't trust them. What silly people we are.

Anyway there was a nice "Rally against Straw men" um. . . I mean . . . "Rally against Racism" that provided a cathartic outlet for many people who apparently rely on said journalists for their facts. The media, which routinely call the "racist" speech of these two these two "far right" and "alt right" people (even though those people hate the pair and call them race traitors) conjured up a group of people holding obscene signs calling them fascists (see what you did there journalists? Kind of escalated didn't it?). On the embarrassing Sunday documentary one lady wondered why the pair didn't come down and speak to them so that they could engage in dialogue. She seemed unaware that a) anyone could go to their talks and participate in the Q&A, in fact dissenting voices were encouraged; and b) that being surrounded by a large group of people convinced you were racist fascists might not be the most welcoming environment for a free & open exchange of ideas.

Molyneux & Southern actually did try to chat with some protesters in Australia  (guess how that went - mind the language). Even if they had been up for an open to the non-paying public discussion on their concerns they would have been treated as the problem rather than representative holders of views shared by many of us. All deeply patronising and utterly uncomprehending. 

And speaking of uncomprehending . . . you ain't seen nothing yet!

This "interview" is the most cringe-worthy spectacle I have ever had the misfortune to behold. It leaves the infamous Cathy Newman/Jordan Peterson spectacle in the dust. This interview drew the attention of people from the other side of the planet to our little country it was so awful. Watch this commentary from an Irishman on the Canadian's experiences in Oceania - very funny but so tragic. Bearing in mind his comment on cognitive dissonance, I invite you to read this piece from an experienced  journalist at the NZ Herald on why the Canadians are terrible and shouldn't be allowed to talk. I cannot locate a coherent rationale, can you? As was so often the case it appears that some people just don't want anyone to hear things they find offensive, they can't ratioanlise their position, but they still want it stopped.

So if you haven't watched the interview with Patrick Gower you simply cannot miss it - it's a mind bender. Among many lowlights is the lack of response to Ms Southern's comment about multiculturalism being OK until you're asked to accept something like the culture of [Islamic] women being stoned to death for the crime of being raped. Mr Gower shows not the slightest inkling of comprehension - in fact he goes on another show later to further reinforce his public humiliation. Then he again digs himself deeper into his hole in this article. Three times he demonstrates that he just doesn't get it. I genuinely feel sorry for him, but I feel worse for those who still choose to remain his audience.

Yet he is typical of the people responsible for mediating information to the general public. 

Mr Gower, please read this article - it's from the Guardian so it must be correct right? The Guardian's nice isn't it? The article states that because of Islamic Law - the Hudud ordinances introduced in 1977 as part of a "Shariasation" or "Islamisation" process - up to 80% of Pakistani women are in gaol because they have been raped.

In an effort to more closely follow true Islam the government of a Commonwealth nation brought in laws punishing women for being raped. Let all that sink in. Then go back to the answer Ms Southern gave you. Please. I'm sorry, if you don't do this then I think you are simply not up to the responsibilities of your job. 

Following all this of course was Massey university's decision to ban the ex-leader of the Opposition and Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash. That deplatforming was based on "security threats" and the belief that his opinions got very near to hate speech - a concept that is not even enshrined in NZ law. Sounds a lot like our Prime Minister - we can't legally stop him but boy we tried! It's probably not coincidental that Mr Brash was a big supporter of the Canadian's right to free speech either.

BTW you'll never guess the topic of his talk: "PC culture has gone too far to the point of limiting freedom of speech". 

You. Cannot. Make. This. Stuff. Up.

One of our Universities crushed this event exactly as a Canadian Uni crushed a similar event a year ago. 

This is an example that all over the West we are seeing the silencing of people that governments and other powerful groups disagree with. Given the state of our societies such a situation is to be expected and is unavoidable. It will get worse, not better. We will continue to get shut down, deplatformed and shadow banned (a friend told me he can no longer access IslamAndKiwis from his work computer due to its "offensive" content).

What to do?

Accept reality. This is the deal now. I don't think there's some grand conspiracy to silence us, I genuinely think most people have found themselves in a place where they can't make a reality-based decision because the West is so terribly depleted and has no honest sense of itself, history or the "Other" that we are always being told we need to be more open to.

Too many bad changes are happening too fast around too much of the West right now. You & I have noticed. So you're part of the problem as far as the zeitgeist is concerned. Are you prepared to go the distance on this? You'd better be.

People are being conditioned to expect violence, irrationality and bigotry from you. How will you cope?

My recommendations:

• Be vocal but speak quietly with a smile on your face.
• Don't quarrel.
• Ask the right questions of the people you meet - especially any politicians, academics and media types.
• Build bridges, make friends.
• Be patient.
• Knock it off with the "Right" and the "Left" stuff. In our context this just muddies the waters and we really do have lots of allies on the other side of the aisle. We still have lots of common ground. Remember, 70% of Kiwis wanted Molyneux & Southern to speak.
• The legacy media is apparently four times more "liberal" than the general public. So we may have to bypass the old media.

Many have a deep antipathy to you and what they think are your views because they have simply been misinformed. We can fix that if we're given the room. But we will have to work very, very hard to be permitted the room to make our case. This will take time.

But the only alternative is that our societies will eventually - maybe 50 years from now, maybe sooner - degenerate into anarchy, we'll be at each other's throats and some form of tyranny arises. We can't let that happen and if we can help prevent it by our own personal pain then that's what we need to do. Around 80 years ago our fathers ran at machine guns to stop this happening, now we have a chance to follow their example to prevent the violence.

Commit. Get engaged. Pay the price.
It should be obvious that now is the time.

Dr Daniel Pipes calmly explains why the MEF supports Stephen Lennon.

This is very illuminating. Six Minutes.


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i24NEWS
CLEARCUT | Daniel Pipes, the President of the Middle East Forum, joins i24NEWS' Michelle Makori to discuss the think tank's support of the far-right British activist Tommy Robinson

Democracy demands our participation to work. Challenge these people.

Seven more minutes of things that some people don't think you need to hear.


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UK MEP Janice Atkinson on the migrant crime statistics the EU doesn't want you to know about
​Jihad Watch's UK correspondent Joshua Winston interviews UK MEP Janice Atkinson. In this one, she talks about prison populations filled with migrants, 85% of immigrants being economic migrants, and the numbers of people who are waiting to come in.

Who are the ten most influential politicians in Europe at the moment? Daniel Pipes from the Middle East Forum gives his opinion - and they're not who you might think.


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Who Are Europe's Most Important Politicians?
"Who is the most important European alive today?" I asked in early 2010. Dutch politician Geert Wilders, came my answer, because "he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent." I even raised the prospect of his emerging "as a world-historical figure."

In other words, I focused not on run-of-the-mill political leaders – the UK prime minister, French president, German chancellor, or even the Roman Catholic pope – but on the disruptive politician leading Europe's revolt against immigration and Islamization. Conventional politicians optimistically assume that the continent will muddle through, that some form of convivencia (Spanish for "coexistence," a term deriving from medieval Andalusia) will emerge, that multiculturalism somehow will tame the beast of Islamic supremacism.

But as Europe, population 741 million, heads toward cultural crisis, as indigenous birthrates plunge, as Islamist aggression increases, and as the elite made up of the 6Ps (police, politicians, press, priests, professors and prosecutors) myopically insists there is nothing to worry about, this happy talk has little basis in reality.

In 2010, Wilders clearly led those individuals and parties who stand up for traditional Western civilization – what the media inaccurately smears as the far-right but more accurately called civilizationist. Wilders remains a prominent spokesman for civilizationism; but he has not wielded power since 2012 and polls show that a competing Dutch civilizationist, Thierry Baudet, now attracts more voters. In retrospect, it appears that Wilders dwelt overly on the nature of Islam rather than on the dangers of migration.

In his place, a number of civilizationist politicians have emerged who wield actual power, especially in formulating their countries' policies towards migrants and Islam. The key event in their emergence was Angela Merkel's great folly of 2015-16 when, at her invitation, over a million unvetted mostly-Muslim migrants arrived in Germany and elsewhere. Then, to make matters worse, she insisted on other European Union members take a proportion of the migrants, sparking widespread resentment.

Here, in my estimation, are the ten outstanding civilizationist leaders of this moment, in ascending order of importance (to be clear, this is an assessment, not an endorsement):

10. Siv Jensen- Norway's minister of finance who leads an immigration-restriction party.
9. Christoph Blocher- Switzerland's former head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police and still a key figure in the country's anti-immigration politics.
8. Robert Fico- Slovakia's former prime minister and still a behind-the-scenes-strongman, who says "Islam has no place" in Slovakia and has taken steps to prevent mosques from opening.
7. Miloš Zeman- Czechia's president who warns against immigration of Muslims because their integration into Europe is "practically impossible."
6. Markus Söder- Bavaria's premier who demands tougher security along Germany's border with Austria.
5. Heinz-Christian Strache- Austria's vice-chancellor wants to end the "policy of Islamization" (i.e., welcoming Muslim migrants) and instead initiate a "minus-immigration policy."
4. Horst Seehofer- Germany's interior minister who is battling his prime minister (Merkel) to keep illegal migrants out of the country.
3. Matteo Salvini- Italy's interior minister who has made stopping uncontrolled emigration his first priority, to be followed by the far more challenging task of expelling 500,000 illegal immigrants.
2. Jarosław Kaczyński- Poland's former prime minister, now the country's eminence grise, who formed a government by focusing on the immigration and Islamization issues.
1. Viktor Orbán- Hungary's visionary and autocratic prime minister since 2010 who won control of parliament by arguing against uncontrolled Muslim immigration, then battled Merkel and offered a vision for a traditional, Christian Europe.

A few observations about this list: Jimmie Åkesson of the Sweden Democrats might jump on it after Sweden's September elections. Not included are up-and-coming politicians such as Germany's minister of health, Jens Spahn, or Denmark's Morten Messerschmidt. Other than Blocher, Zeman, and Kaczyński, these politicians are relatively young, with potentially long careers ahead of them. Jensen is the odd one out, being the only politician who is not male and not from Central Europe.

After many years of getting nowhere, the opposition to lax immigration controls and multiculturalism has now become a significant force in nine countries, seven of them members of the European Union. I predict that this number will substantially increase before long, perhaps making up half of the European Union's soon-to-be-27 members and changing the direction of Europe as a whole. And one of the figures named here may yet become a world-historical figure.

Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2018 by Daniel Pipes. 

Yes he's out for the time being, but when the authorities decided to move him from a prison that was 7% Muslim to the prison with the highest proportion of Muslims the signs were clear: we want to squeeze him.

Nineteen kgs the guy lost in 2 months. Listening to him speak he is obviously physically weakened and, to me at least, he seems to be carrying some other damage from his time inside. This video is of him being reunited with his family when he got home. It's heart warming. The bloke still has such spirit and he didn't deserve the treatment he got.

Choosing not to eat food cooked by Muslim prisoners and not being permitted anything else he lived on 5 tins of tuna and some fruit each week. The days were oppressively hot but he couldn't open his cell windows as excrement would be thrown in. Three times his cell door was left "accidentally" unlocked and at all other times prisoners had access to his door where they shouted abuse during the day.

Don't try to tell me that's fair.

I may have mentioned this before, but a few years ago I was with some dear Iraqi Mandaean friends in a Middle East restaurant in Sydney. We were chatting in normal voices until I asked something about the Shi'a/Sunni divide in Iraq. At this my friend lowered his voice (and his head) and whispered an answer to me. Obviously he did not wish to be overheard in unknown company. But he is in the West. Why did he act like he was back in Iraq? Why do so many Western non-Muslims assume a similar attitude now in discussing problems regarding Islam?

Recently Egypt's Coptic Pope has made an apparently soothing statement on the historic "good relations" between that country's Christians and its Muslim majority. The statement flies in the face of reality. Why did he do it? Only days before one of his Bishops was found murdered in a Monastery. Doesn't he see this?

Raymond Ibrahim explains the phenomena.


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The Dhimmi in the Mirror
During a recent ceremony that was attended by more than 50 ambassadors and diplomats, many from Western nations, Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II reportedly said “that Egypt had a long history and civilization and has been a model for coexistence between Christians and Muslims for 14 centuries,” to quote the online website, Egypt Independent (I cannot locate his original speech in Arabic to confirm his precise words).
​
This assertion raises a host of questions, from its veracity, to the reason it was uttered by the representative head of the nation’s indigenous Christians.

As to the claim itself—that “Egypt … has been a model of coexistence between Christians and Muslims for 14 centuries”—this is somewhat literally true: from Islam’s initial invasion of Egypt in the late 630s, to the present, Egypt has indeed been a “model”—a paradigm—of what happens to native Christians when Muslims conquer their territory.  Even the word “coexist,” though connoting living peaceably with others, literally only means to live together (including its Arabic form, ta‘ayush).

At any rate, and as documented in my new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, those 14 centuries saw a  continuum of hostility ranging from wholesale persecution (in the worst of times) to mere discrimination (in the best of times) in Egypt.  Much of this is confirmed by the History of the Coptic Patriarchs (which no doubt the latest Coptic patriarch is aware of).  This multivolume account, compiled over the course of a millennium, covers the history of the Coptic Church under Islam till 1894.

Unmitigated Muslim persecution of Christians permeates it pages, including the burning and banning of churches and crosses; the fiscal extortion, slaughter, enslavement, mass rape, and forced conversion of Christians.  Think what the Islamic State (“ISIS”) has been doing to Christians and others but on an exponential scale.  Moreover, the persecutors weren’t “radicals” who have “nothing to do with Islam,” but leading heads of Islamic states, whether Arabs, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, or Turks.

Following a brief respite and “golden age” for Christians under colonial rule, when freedom of religion and equality were expected and enforced, the persecution of Egypt’s Copts is back in full force.  Since Tawadros became Pope in late 2012 alone, hundreds of Christians have been massacred in repeated church bombings, monastery attacks, and random killings.  The mere rumor that a church is being renovated or built, or that a home is being used as a church, prompts Muslim mobs to riot and destroy Christian property, often with the support of officials (as happened only recently).  And of course, young Christian girls continue to be targeted for kidnapping, rape, and conversion to Islam.

So why did Tawadros say what he did (whether it was meant as a double entendre or not being irrelevant)?  Because real politick dictates that his speaking the ugly truth would only exacerbate the plight of his flock: most Western diplomats in attendance would at best do nothing, at worst criticize him for being an “Islamophobe.” Either way, he would be left alone to deal with his Muslim overlords; and they would be displeased—and manifest their displeasure in the usual way—because a dhimmi, who is tolerated inasmuch as he meekly submits, dared tarnish Islamic Egypt’s image.

From the start, many in the West have failed to understand this hostage-like relationship.   For example, years before the First Crusade was launched, Peter the Hermit (b. 1050) went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When he finally reached the Holy Sepulchre, “he saw many forbidden and wicked things occurring there. . . . [So] he sought out the patriarch of the holy church of Jerusalem and asked why gentiles and evil men were able to pollute holy places and steal away offerings from the faithful, using the church as if a stable, beating up Christians, despoiling pilgrims through unjust fees, and inflicting on them many sufferings.” The frustrated patriarch threw up his hands in exasperation: “Why do you reprimand me and disturb me in the midst of my fatherly cares? I have but the strength and power of a tiny ant when compared to those proud men. We have to redeem our lives here by regular tribute payments [jizya] or else face death-dealing punishment.”

Then and now, not a few Mideast Christians have also had to “redeem their lives” by, among other forms of “regular tribute,” not tarnishing Islam’s image—even as Westerners wonder why they don’t “speak up.”

Which leads to the real question: If Christian minorities living under Islamic authority have little choice but to speak well of their “coexistence” with Islam, why are Western leaders, politicians, and talking heads of all varieties—who are not under Islamic authority—also behaving like cowed dhimmis?

Put differently, if the Coptic pope is hostage to his Muslim masters, exactly who or what is the Catholic pope--who covers up for Islam even more—a hostage to?

Just a couple of days ago I was chatting with an old work mate who expressed an interest in the Bible but recoiled at the idea that God would deliberately subject the Son he loved to humiliation, torture and death. How could any loving parent allow their child to go through that he wondered - let alone the Supreme Being - and especially for the sake of this grotesque, distorted and ungrateful human race?

Ah, that is the old stumbling block. How indeed? What kind of God would love people so much that it defies 'logic'? And if this is the religion that the West is based upon what affect has this astonishing and unique view of God, that we have so taken for granted, had on our history and civilisation?

Tom Holland is a historian who grew up going to Sunday School but - like many of us - drifted away as "better" ideas took hold. Today though he has come to view the Faith he rejected with renewed respect and has a genuine grasp of the debt we all owe it. 

I paste below an article he wrote on his discovery and also a brief clip from an interview he had with the English Evangelical Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright (Tom Wright has visited New Zealand and been interviewed on RNZ National).

If familiarity has similarly bred contempt in you of "Mere Christianity" then I offer you some insights from a man who has trodden the way before you.

And if you hold to the belief that there are "universal" ideas of human rights and freedoms held by Muslims that similarly sprung from their Faith as they did from ours, then I have to say that you really do not understand your own history, the Faith of Islam or the world at all.

From the NewStatesman.


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​​Tom Holland: Why I was wrong about Christianity
It took me a long time to realise my morals are not Greek or Roman, but thoroughly, and proudly, Christian.

When I was a boy, my upbringing as a Christian was forever being weathered by the gale force of my enthusiasms. First, there were dinosaurs. I vividly remember my shock when, at Sunday school one day, I opened a children’s Bible and found an illustration on its first page of Adam and Eve with a brachiosaur. Six years old I may have been, but of one thing – to my regret – I was rock-solid certain: no human being had ever seen a sauropod. That the teacher seemed not to care about this error only compounded my sense of outrage and bewilderment. A faint shadow of doubt, for the first time, had been brought to darken my Christian faith.

With time, it darkened further still. My obsession with dinosaurs – glamorous, ­ferocious, extinct – evolved seamlessly into an obsession with ancient empires. When I read the Bible, the focus of my fascination was less the children of Israel or Jesus and his disciples than their adversaries: the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Romans. In a similar manner, although I vaguely continued to believe in God, I found Him infinitely less charismatic than my favourite Olympians: Apollo, Athena, Dionysus. Rather than lay down laws and condemn other deities as demons, they preferred to enjoy themselves. And if they were vain, selfish and cruel, that only served to endow them with the allure of rock stars.

By the time I came to read Edward Gibbon and the other great writers of the Enlightenment, I was more than ready to accept their interpretation of history: that the triumph of Christianity had ushered in an “age of superstition and credulity”, and that modernity was founded on the dusting down of long-forgotten classical values. My childhood instinct to think of the biblical God as the po-faced enemy of liberty and fun was rationalised. The defeat of paganism had ushered in the reign of Nobodaddy, and of all the crusaders, inquisitors and black-hatted puritans who had served as his acolytes. Colour and excitement had been drained from the world. “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean,” Swinburne wrote, echoing the apocryphal lament of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome. “The world has grown grey from thy breath.” Instinctively, I agreed.

So, perhaps it was no surprise that I should have continued to cherish classical antiquity as the period that most stirred and inspired me. When I came to write my first work of history, Rubicon, I chose a subject that had been particularly close to the hearts of the philosophes: the age of Cicero. The theme of my second, Persian Fire, was one that even in the 21st century was serving Hollywood, as it had served Montaigne and Byron, as an archetype of the triumph of liberty over despotism: the Persian invasions of Greece.

The years I spent writing these studies of the classical world – living intimately in the company of Leonidas and of Julius Caesar, of the hoplites who had died at Thermopylae and of the legionaries who had triumphed at Alesia – only confirmed me in my fascination: for Sparta and Rome, even when subjected to the minutest historical inquiry, did not cease to seem possessed of the qualities of an apex predator. They continued to stalk my imaginings as they had always done – like a tyrannosaur.

Yet giant carnivores, however wondrous, are by their nature terrifying. The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics, and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. As such, the founding conviction of the Enlightenment – that it owed nothing to the faith into which most of its greatest figures had been born – increasingly came to seem to me unsustainable.

“Every sensible man,” Voltaire wrote, “every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.” Rather than acknowledge that his ethical principles might owe anything to Christianity, he preferred to derive them from a range of other sources – not just classical literature, but Chinese philosophy and his own powers of reason. Yet Voltaire, in his concern for the weak and ­oppressed, was marked more enduringly by the stamp of biblical ethics than he cared to admit. His defiance of the Christian God, in a paradox that was certainly not unique to him, drew on motivations that were, in part at least, recognisably Christian.

“We preach Christ crucified,” St Paul declared, “unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” He was right. Nothing could have run more counter to the most profoundly held assumptions of Paul’s contemporaries – Jews, or Greeks, or Romans. The notion that a god might have suffered torture and death on a cross was so shocking as to appear repulsive. Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the Crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was. In the ancient world, it was the role of gods who laid claim to ruling the universe to uphold its order by inflicting punishment – not to suffer it themselves.

Today, even as belief in God fades across the West, the countries that were once collectively known as Christendom continue to bear the stamp of the two-millennia-old revolution that Christianity represents. It is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.

​Tom Holland’s most recent book, “Dynasty: the Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar”, is published by Abacus

Where will this end?

This excellent 30 minute video (note: some foul language) includes examples of double standards from Britain, Australia & Sweden. Several chilling cases are offered - particularly concerning to me was the young lady, a Muslim ex-Police officer of colour, who found "radicalisation" in the London Met and was quietly threatened on multiple occasions not to say anything. 

Nobody in authority will acknowledge this unofficial double standard, just as they refused to acknowledge the potentially one million white and Sikh girls gang raped by Muslim grooming gangs in Britain and the Netherlands. If the only goal is to maintain the equanimity of the wider community then I suppose that it is easiest not to scrutinise the core problem - but surely only for a very short time? If it needs repeating: The core problem here is Sharia and the culture arising among Muslims due to Sharia. The core problem expressly is not the people who notice & complain about all this. 

Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, is mentioned in the clip. He noted several years ago:~ "A de facto blasphemy law is operating in Britain today. The fact is that publishers and newspapers live in fear of criticising Islam." The video ends with Christopher Hitchen's prescient warning on the impending loss of the freedom to criticise due to the new double standard. 

The Archbishop and the arch Atheist agree on this. Maybe there's a problem?

This is a thoroughly useful enquiry and highly recommended. Again I'll state that, no, I'm not smart enough to be a lawyer so there may be subtleties to each of these situations that I am missing. But the idea that the law should be transparently & evenly enforced does seem something we should all reasonably expect. "Justice must be seen to be done" I seem to recall hearing years ago. Yet in all these jurisdictions we see similar responses that seem based - help me here - simply on an ignorant and short-sighted fear. Am I wrong?

I would note that the woman seen being arrested early in the piece was not apprehended directly for her work over halting the illegal Muslim prayers but because she said to a gay opponent "have a gay day" as they parted. This is the explanation offered by authorities for her arrest. I'm sure it had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with her publicly embarrassing the cops into doing their job and enforcing what they termed "discretionary laws".

Nothing at all.

Of all the Scandinavian countries perhaps Denmark is the one with the best track record in human rights. They refused to hand over their Jews to the Nazis during the war and have been the most aware of the menace Sharia compliant (or submissive) Muslims represent to them. Now they are taking some relatively bold steps to curb Sharia.

Unsurprisingly, this is upsetting some people.

Bruce Bawer explains.


>>>>>>>>>>>
Not So Rotten in Denmark?
They're not turning things around, but at least they're trying to slow down the decline. 
​  
On July 1, the New York Times ran a long article by Ellen Barry and Martin Selsoe Sorensen headlined “In Denmark, Harsh New Laws for Immigrant ‘Ghettos.’” How harsh? Henceforth, starting at the age of one, children living in designated “ghettos” – in other words, “low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves” – have to spend at least 25 hours a week receiving instruction in Danish values, “including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language.” Parents who refuse to obey may lose their welfare payments.

Given the proven failure (over decades) of innumerable Muslim immigrants in Denmark to learn Danish, find jobs, and otherwise integrate into Danish society – not to mention the tendency of young people who've grown up in those “enclaves” to join gangs, commit violence, and express open hostility to native Danes and their culture – these laws sound eminently reasonable. In fact, anyone aware of the scale of the problem might well pronounce them tame and insufficient. But not the Times. Barry and Sorensen describe the new laws not as a responsible attempt to prevent the kind of social and economic collapse looming in next-door Sweden, and to preserve a free, safe, and solvent Denmark for future generations of ethnic Danes and the descendants of immigrants, but rather as a “tough” and “sinister” expression of the Danish government's “ire.”

One law that the Times writers single out for disdain “would impose a four-year prison sentence on immigrant parents who force their children to make extended visits to their country of origin...in that way damaging their 'schooling, language and well-being.'” Barry and Sorensen plainly find this law unspeakably severe. One wonders if they know what they're talking about. The fact is that countless Muslim parents in Europe send their kids “back home” for years at a time – it's called “dumping” – so that they can attend Koran schools, soak up Islamic codes of conduct, and (most important) be shielded from such abhorrent Western phenomena as individual liberty and sexual equality.

As it happens, this practice has been studied extensively. It represents a profound danger to the children involved – girls especially – as well as to the Western countries to which they eventually return. In her 2001 book But the Greatest of These Is Freedom: The Consequences of Immigration in Europe (2011), Hege Storhaug of Norway's Human Rights Service explained that “girls are sent abroad so that they won't be able to live on equal terms with males and enjoy the right to choose their own spouses”; some of them, moreover, “are sent abroad at puberty to be prepared for marriage – to be prepared, that is, to be good wives who live up to the demands and standards set by men in their families' homeland.” Is a four-year prison sentence too tough a penalty for parents who do such things to their children? No, especially when you consider that Danish prisons could be mistaken for luxury hotels while the madrassas in which these people enroll their kids look like, well, prisons – and the marriages (usually cousin marriages) into which those girls end up being forced are, in all but name, prison sentences.

Barry and Sorensen interviewed two critics of the new laws – a pair of Muslim sisters whom they depict as model citizens and describe as being fluent in Danish (but who are also, bemusingly, on welfare). “Danish politics is just about Muslims now,” one of the sisters complained. “I don’t know when they will be satisfied with us.” Gee, maybe when you stop bleeding the Danish treasury dry? Maybe when the 30,000 or so members of your “community” across Europe who belong to Islamic terrorist cells stop plotting murderous mayhem? Sister #2 griped that “her daughter was being taught so much about Christmas in kindergarten that she came home begging for presents from Santa Claus.” Sounds like a salutary change from what's happening elsewhere in Western Europe, where, as part of nefarious propaganda campaigns, non-Muslim kids are routinely taken on school trips to mosques, shown how to put on a hijab, and taught to recite the shahada – all of which the Times and newspapers like it routinely celebrate. “Nobody should tell me,” Sister #2 added, “whether or how my daughter should go to preschool....I’d rather lose my benefits than submit to force.” Fine. Get a job.

Toward the end of their piece, Barry and Sorensen dutifully quoted a handful of Danes who enthusiastically support the new measures. One woman mentioned her shock at being invited to a wedding only to discover that the guests were separated by sex. Another said, “We pay their rent, their clothing, their food, and then they come in broken Danish and say, ‘We can’t work because we’ve got a pain.’” A third observed: “You could say, of course, parents have the right to bring up their own kids....We would say they do not have the right to destroy the future freedom of their children.” Nevertheless, in classic Times sob-story fashion, the piece concluded with a quote from a Muslim high-school student who warned that the new laws, however well-intentioned, will only serve to bring about the “parallel society” that Danes are “so afraid of.” What malarkey! Those parallel societies already exist all over Western Europe, and the Danish government is doing more than probably any of its counterparts in Western Europe to eradicate them – and thereby save its people, their society, and their values from everything that those parallel societies portend. 

Two days after the Times lambasted the new Danish laws, Time's Amro Ali went even further, comparing Denmark's actions on Muslims to – yes – Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. “The legislation reads like a 19th century missionary enterprise, a colonial experiment to civilize the brown folks,” groused Ali. No, that missionary impulse was part of the reason why one set of Danish leaders after another, against all reason, persisted in flooding their tiny country with unassimilable hordes from a culture that could hardly more different from their own. As for the bit about “the brown folks,” color has nothing to do with it; Hindus, for example, have proven to be not a burden and a threat but a boon to Europe.

No, the new Danish laws are all about the unique danger that Islam represents, and represent nothing more or less than a noble endeavor to keep a small free country from becoming part of a totalitarian caliphate. In his indictment of Denmark, Ali used pretty much every word one might expect: “divisive,” “illiberal,” “bigotry,” “xenophobic,” “discriminatory,” “exclusionary,” “[h]atred,” “fear.” If Ali sincerely doesn't understand Denmark's actions, he might contemplate his own magazine's' dilemma: the one-mighty Time is now on its last legs, a sad shadow of its former self, precisely because its owners failed to respond competently to the profound challenge posed by the rise of the Internet. Denmark's leaders, too, face a profound challenge – that of Islamization, which threats to bring down their small jewel of a homeland – and they're doing everything they can to try to keep their own little vessel afloat.

To be sure, three weeks before the Times and Time started wringing their hands over Denmark's cruelty to Muslims, the Guardian was on the case, with reporter Richard Orange filing an article headlined “Denmark swings right on immigration – and Muslims feel besieged.” Wrote Orange: “The Social Democrats’ leader, Mette Frederiksen, has called Islam a barrier to integration, said some Muslims 'do not respect the Danish judicial system,' that some Muslim women refuse to work for religious reasons, and that Muslim girls are subject to 'massive social control.'” All true. “She has also called for all Muslim schools in the country to be closed.” Good. All they teach is fanaticism and hate. Orange interviewed one Istahil Hussein, 36, who “says the change in Danish opinion so disturbing that she is thinking of returning to Somalia, the country she left 18 years ago.” Good idea. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Like his colleagues at the Times and Time, Orange represented Denmark's actions as a product of unfounded prejudice. There was no mention of, say, classrooms full of Danish-born children who don't speak Danish or of imams who preach conquest of Europe.

Speaking of which, on July 24,  Danish prosecutors charged Imam Mundhir Abdallah, who preaches at a mosque in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, with delivering a sermon in which he read the following sacred text: “Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.” It was the first time the Danes ever prosecuted a Muslim cleric for urging the murder of Jews. It may have been the first time any Western European country ever did such a thing. In reporting this news, France24 further noted that five Muslim hate preachers had been banned from Denmark in May of this year– this, while in the U.K., for instance, the government and media soft-pedal mass Muslim gang rapes and deny entry not to Muslim hate preachers but to critics of Islam.

There's more. As The Local reported on July 11, “people who have lived in Denmark for over three years will have to pay for interpreters if required during medical treatment.” Good. One opponent of this measure “rejected the argument that patients should be expected to understand Danish after three years in the country.” Many people, she argued, “have come here for various reasons and have not been able to learn Danish within the three years.” Yes, that's precisely the problem: it's called a lack of effort. When I moved to Norway, I took language classes, studied hard, and was able to pass an advanced fluency test within a few months. I was over forty – way past the optimum language-learning age. Why should Danes do anything whatsoever for people who don't think a free ride in their country is worth taking that kind of trouble?

On July 26 came another story. These days, it turns out, Denmark is receiving fewer tourists from Muslim countries than its neighbors Germany, Norway, and Sweden. The reason? Partly its ban on face-covering veils, partly its ban on halal slaughter. Why visit such an Islamophobic country, after all, when, as the Resett website pointed out, there are plenty of German and Swiss hotels in which each room's furnishings include a Koran and a compass (so you can figure out the direction to Mecca, of course)?

When it comes to resisting Islamization, in short, Denmark is doing a far more impressive job than most of its Western European neighbors. Still, as much as the mainstream media and the rest of the left may squawk with outrage at its attempts to rein in the advance of Islam within its borders, these attempts may all be too little, too late. In a profoundly bleak talk given last year, Lars Hedegaard, the gutsy and eloquent Danish critic of Islam (who is a survivor of both a jihadist assassination attempt and a hate-speech trial), maintained that “once the Muslim population exceeds, say, five percent, it's game over.” Muslims currently make up about 5.3% of Danish inhabitants. Let's hope he's wrong. The Danes, of all people in Western Europe, deserve for him to be wrong.

That's alright guys, we're used to getting left off world maps.
Go out the door, head towards the rising Sun and veer downhill a bit.

​Can't miss it.


>>>>>>>>>>
An Important Message From Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern
​Order Tickets for Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern LIVE in Auckland, New Zealand on August 3rd Now: https://axiomatic.events/stefan-molyn...

You know how we were discussing the fact that Muslims don't seem to have a good track record living alongside non-Muslims? Weeell... In case yet more evidence is needed we have the developing situation in the Philippines on the island of Mindanao.

We are often told by Muslim apologists that Sharia law is "entirely compatible with Western laws & freedoms" and anyway, there are "all kinds of Sharia law" and it is "not correctly implemented in any country currently" so ignore the bad stuff as that's not real Sharia.

Sharia, like Islam itself, means peace dude.

Yet the Christians in the area are - inconceivably - against this beneficial implementation of Sharia. Perhaps they're racists. At the very least they must completely misunderstand the privileges Sharia will bring to them in their exalted status as "People of the Book" eh?

Astonishingly the Muslims of Mindanao also seem to have missed the good news of Sharia for non-Muslims as they've been killing anyone belonging to uncompliant or doubtful groups for years now in order to get Sharia self-rule implemented. All the while claiming the backing of Sharia itself for these atrocities and that they are the real persecuted minority (common theme here, common theme - Burma, Jammu & Kashmir, Chechnya, Nigeria ... Belgium).

How might our friends the Muslim apologists explain this absurd anomaly? In my experience Filipinos are among the nicest and friendliest people you could ever meet ... but ... it's just gotta be racism, right? They have an irrational hatred of Muslims! Yeah, that has to be it.

Boy have those alt-right white supremacist Filipinos on Mindanao got a lot to answer for. They seriously need de-platforming.

This brief note comes from the Barnabas Fund.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Autonomous sharia state to be established in southern Philippines after years of Muslim violence 
The government of the Philippines is to push ahead with the formal creation of a fully-autonomous region in Muslim-dominated Mindanao, which will include allowing elements of sharia (Islamic) law.

President Duterte is expected to sign the Bangsamoro Basic Law later this week. The law, which has been in discussions since 2014, will establish an autonomous region on the southern island of Mindanao. Elements of sharia law are to be incorporated into the justice system.

The Bangsamoro area has a sizeable non-Muslim population. Although it is claimed sharia law elements are expected to only be applicable to Muslims, its incorporation effectively creates an Islamic sub-state within a secular, pluralistic and mainly-Christian country.  

The proposal for an autonomous region was included in a peace deal agreed between the government and Muslim rebel groups in 2013, but its implementation has been delayed by successive governments.

Mindanao Christians objected to a previous agreement in 2008 which proposed an autonomous region with sharia law. The Philippines’ Supreme Court later ruled that the agreement was unconstitutional. Muslim armed groups responded with violence against Christians, killing some and displacing large numbers of others.
​
In May 2017, the MILF Islamist group seized the city of Marawi on Mindanao and murdered Christians and destroyed churches.

In the service of increasing the general level of knowledge and encouraging each other (as we so often grapple with responses varying from boredom to openly hostility when we mention this stuff, don't we?) I am happy to recommend another useful blog or two for your investigation.

The first was mentioned on Gates of Vienna today and I thoroughly enjoyed my time browsing through it. It's a pity I hadn't found it earlier. ECAW's blog is written by a chap who identifies as a Leftie - a fact which I hope will help us all settle in our minds that the issue of Sharia and the growing numbers of Muslims is not only of concern to those dreadful people on "the Right" but to everyone who values our freedoms.

Have a good look through it, he has spent a few years going through Islamic sources, history and authoritative sources and so far I haven't found him going astray on any significant point. He has lots of useful resources and is very thoughtful & articulate.

I found a link there to an article on the popular religious "historian" Karen Armstrong (excuse me, I've come over all queasy for some reason) on Dr Andrew Holt's blog. He examines her view of the Crusades and it's an excellent piece. Many people still think she is a reliable student of history and a fair commentator on the relationship between Islam, Christianity and the West.

Many people would be very wrong.

I'm going to paste the start of the piece here and recommend you follow the link at the end to finish the article. 

Happy exploring!
​

>>>>>>>>>
Crusade Historians and Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong is a former nun who writes broadly on political and religious issues including the crusades and Islam. As a well known critic of modern western attitudes towards Islam, Armstrong has often sought to draw attention to what she sees as historical injustices carried out by westerners in the East. She lists the crusades among these injustices. For example, in her work, Islam: A Short History, she writes:

              It was, for example, during the Crusades, when it was Christians who had instigated a series of brutal holy wars against the Muslim world, that Islam was described by the learned scholar-monks of Europe as an inherently violent and intolerant faith, which had only been able to establish itself by the sword. The myth of the supposed fanatical intolerance of Islam has become one of the received ideas of the West. [pp. 179-180]

Of all of those currently writing on the crusades, her work is probably among the most popular and well known to the general public. In my case, I have had history students who have read her books in other settings come to me confused about apparent contradictions between what they were learning in my class and what they read in her book. I also once had a member of the general public, after reading a guest column I once wrote for the Florida Times Union, email me for the same reason, seeking clarification. The reason for these contradictions is because I have been trained as a medieval historian and work within the current dominant historiography of the crusades, much of which is decidedly at odds with some of the claims Armstrong makes in her works.

The most influential living historian of the crusades is unquestionably retired Cambridge University scholar Jonathan Riley-Smith. His work over the last forty years, including more than a dozen books, has, in many ways, revolutionized our understandings of the crusades. In contrast to Armstrong’s suggestion noted above (to use only one example) that the crusaders “instigated” conflict through the calling of the crusades, Riley-Smith points out that “the original justification for crusading was Muslim aggression.”

What explains this difference in views between Jonathan Riley-Smith, perhaps the world’s leading scholar of the crusades, and Karen Armstrong, one of the world’s most popular authors of the crusades?

Let’s unpack it a bit.

From my point of view, the idea that the crusades represented a case of medieval Christians “instigating” wars against Muslims seems to falsely suggest that serious conflict between Muslims and Christians only began with the crusades. This ignores an entirely different framework that crusade historians often work within when considering the origins of the crusading movement. Crusade historian Paul F. Crawford has, in at least two essays, outlined the history of conflict between Christians and Muslims from shortly after Muhammad’s death all the way to the crucial years just prior to calling of the First Crusade. During the period of the Arab Conquest, from the seventh to eighth centuries, Muslim armies conquered more land (from the coast of modern Portugal to the Hindu Kush) than the Roman Army held at its height and perhaps two-thirds of the Christian world, including much of the Byzantine Empire, the Levant, North Africa, Spain, and even pushed into France during the eighth century. Continued conflict took place between Christians and Muslims from the eighth through the late eleventh centuries that saw the establishment of the Emirate of Sicily, attacks on Italy (and twice on the city of Rome itself), and significant overall shrinkage of Byzantine Christian territories.
...

<<<<<<<<<<

Read the rest HERE.

Below is another 3 minute interview with British MEP Janice Atkinson.

Well worth the time to get some first-hand experiences. Top leadership in the British political parties have a lot to answer for.

By the way - do you know who that is in the photo above?
That is Joseph Stalin in 1902.
Looked like a nice young fella back then didn't he?
​Yes he certainly did look nice back then.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
UK MEP Janice Atkinson Discusses Voter Fraud by Muslims in the UK​
Jihad Watch's UK correspondent Joshua Winston interviews UK MEP Janice Atkinson, who discusses an incident in which 50 Muslims were registered to vote from one house, a common occurrence. She recounts that women were jumping out the bathroom windows in order to get back in and vote again, and that the men were leading the Muslim women to the polls and telling them how to vote. This all happened in Jo Cox's constituency while she was so busy with the White Helmets.

More on Lauren Southern's experience in Sydney the other day.

Never mind the response of the Police, you'll never guess how the media responded to all this.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Truth About Lakemba

This is rather a long video I pinched from Gates of Vienna, but it is truly riveting. If such an account doesn't wake us up then I don't know what will. 

When someone presents so much information in one go it really is almost a traumatic experience. There is a transcript of her talk or if you prefer you can watch the subtitled video (speeding it up a little helped me). But do be warned, the general tone and the trajectory that Sweden is on is genuinely shocking.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nina Drakfors: Swedish Politicians Must Put the Welfare of Their Own People Before Anyone Else
​Nina Drakfors is a former Social Democrat in Sweden who woke up to what is happening to her country — or, more precisely, what is being done to it by its own political leaders and the globalist elites who are pushing for the erasure of national borders.
​
She originally gave this talk at a meeting in Copenhagen at the invitation of the Danish anti-sharia group For Frihed.
Many thanks to Tania Groth for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

​Video transcript:

00:15 This is a speech I gave in Copenhagen on May 1, 2018.
00:23 My name is Nina Drakfors, and I have been active
00:27 in a citizen-journalists’ initiative called “Investigating Sweden”.
00:31 In this citizen-journalists’ initiative, we call leaders of our society
00:37 and ask questions that are important to us,
00:43 questions which we find that the mainstream media do not ask.
00:47 What we have done is simply to highlight what we cannot talk about in Sweden.
​...

Many news outlets and commentators tell us is that the reason former Eastern Bloc countries refuse to accept Muslim migrants is xenophobia or just plain racism & white supremacy ... you know, the usual poorly thought through vacuous allegations.

But what reasons do the leaders and people of those countries give for their actions? It might be a good idea to find out. Do they know something we don't?

Well for one thing, after many decades of living under Soviet hegemony where they were expected to believe that black was white if they were directed to do so, they are understandably unwilling to accept directives from EU headquarters in Brussels that they are not convinced are sound. Especially when these directives are accompanied by threats.

But the Slavs also have a long experience of Islam. And because they haven't yet learnt that all history is biased, written from the jaundiced perspective of the victors and therefore not to be trusted, they actually take it as instructive.

We in the Antipodes of course have no such history so it might an idea to learn from their's.
Here are a couple of reasons from our part of the world to do so...

• In Sydney the "provocateur" Lauren Southern is prevented by Police from going into a "highly religious" Muslim area in Lakemba because there may be violence (wait a minute - I thought Islam means peace? Why should there be any violence when all she wanted to do was look and ask questions?). She would have been arrested for "breach of the peace" just for going into the area. Even though she wouldn't be the one getting agro. But why not deal with the abusive and violent people for breaching the peace? We see the same pattern as in Britain (& NZ): It's easier to silence the non-violent people than to bring the law to bear on the violent. 
• In Melbourne a young guy is threatened with arrest for "breaching the peace" while merely watching a protest march by the black African community there. The black Africans were protesting recent media coverage which highlighted the likelihood that Sudanese are 60 times more likely to commit crimes than the general population. TV channels stating this provable fact were deemed "racist". I can't see how any of this helps deal with the problem though, can you?

So what about those Eastern Europeans who have had extensive experience of Muslims over the centuries? How has that experience informed their responses? Can we learn anything from them? Or are we happy to risk new areas like Lakemba (or Tower Hamlets or Molenbeek or Dearborn or Malmo) popping up in Auckland or Wellington in the next few years?

If it happened there why shouldn't it happen here?

Despite all our best intentions we keep seeing this sort of thing in every country where Islam goes. Like everyone I want to be kind to the Muslim migrants - but at what point does the other side of the coin get taken into account?

Raymond Ibrahim has provided the article below. I do hope we learn from it.


>>>>>>>>>>>
Lessons From the Past: Why Eastern European Nations Reject Muslim Migrants
What accounts for the stark difference between how Western and Eastern European nations respond to Muslim migrants?  The former—including Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia—have been welcoming, whereas the latter—including Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—have not, often vociferously so.

Part of the answer, which may surprise some, revolves around history: Eastern European nations have a long and intimate history with, and thus understand Islam better than Western nations.

Consider Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán’s logic for rejecting Muslim migrants:
     Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims.  This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity….  We don’t want to criticize France, Belgium, any other country, but we think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….

The prime minister went on to invoke history: “I have to say that when it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones who have experience because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years.”

Orbán was referring to Islam’s conquest and occupation of Hungary from 1541 to 1699.  Then, persecution and terrorism were rampant.

Nor was Hungary alone. Muslims conquered, occupied, and terrorized most of southeastern Europe—often in ways that make Islamic State atrocities seem tame.

In 1354, the Ottomans—who were more committed to the principles of jihad than any of their Muslim predecessors—first crossed the Dardanelles and established a foothold in Eastern Europe.  Immediately, “[w]here there were churches he [Suleiman, son of Sultan Orhan] destroyed them or converted them to mosques,” writes an Ottoman chronicler: “Where there were bells, Suleiman broke them up and cast them into fires. Thus, in place of bells there were now muezzins.”

Before long the Balkans were conquered in the name of jihad.  The atrocities committed before, during, and after these conquests are well documented.  For example, writing around 1438, Bartolomeo de Giano highlighted the “calamitous and lamentable slaughter that we see in these days.” Everywhere they conquered, the jihadis erected “great mountains of [Christian] heads,” and “so great a quantity of bodies lay consumed, partially rotted, partially devoured by dogs, that it would seem unbelievable to anyone who had not seen it with their own eyes.”

Survivors were either enslaved to “serve their [masters’] wicked and filthy pleasures” and/or forced into becoming “Saracens [Muslims] who will later be enemies of the Christians.” From Hungary, three hundred thousand were enslaved and “carried off in just a few days”; from Serbia and Transylvania one hundred thousand were hauled off. “The massive enslavement of slavic populations during this period gave rise, in fact, to our word ‘slave,’” comments one historian; “in Bartolomeo’s time, to be a slave was to be a Slav.”

Young and old everywhere were seen being “led away in iron fetters tied to the backs of horses,” continues Bartolomeo, and “women and children were herded by dogs without any mercy or piety. If one of them slowed down, unable to walk further because of thirst or pain, O Good Jesus! she immediately ended her life there in torment, cut in half.”

The slave markets of Adrianople, then-capital of the Ottoman sultanate, were so inundated with human flesh that children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.”

Similarly, the Ottomans’ chief Muslim allies, the Tatar khanate of Crimea—described by Christians as the “heathen giant who feeds on our blood”—enslaved and sold “like sheep” some three million Slavs (Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Ukrainians) between 1450 and 1783.  In 1630, a Lithuanian described how Muslim masters “castrated” the men and “cut off their ears and nostrils, burned cheeks and foreheads with the burning iron and forced them to work with their chains and shackles during the daylight, and sit in the prisons during the night; they are sustained by the meager food consisting of the dead animals’ meat, rotten, full of worms, which even a dog would not eat. The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures.”

Muslim aggression and atrocities against Eastern Europeans culminated with the slaughter if not genocide of any Christian the sultan’s scimitar could reach (Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians), and ended only with the demise of the Ottoman sultanate soon after World War I.

It is this long history of living with and under Islam—that is, personal and direct experience, as amply documented in Sword and Scimitar—that has caused several Eastern European nations to reject Muslim migrants.

Of course, some will argue that the aforementioned history does not pertain to current realities.  This would be a plausible position if not for the fact that every Western city that contains a large Muslim population has experienced a dramatic rise in terrorism and crimes in general—most of which are fueled by that old Islamic hostility for infidels.

In Germany and the United Kingdom, crime and rape have soared in direct proportion to the number of Muslim “refugees” accepted.  Sweden alone—where rape has increased by 1,472% since that country embraced “multiculturalism”—is reportedly on the verge of collapse.
​
When it comes to considering its relationship with Islam, the West would do well to revisit and learn from history—over a millennium of it.  Otherwise it will have to keep learning the hard way.

(Editor’s note: All quotes and facts of history appearing in the following article are documented in the author’s new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.)

A useful video for those seeking some understanding of the good aspects of the prophet's character that attract many Muslims to him. The producers have also provided this useful 9 page chronology of Muhammad which you might like to keep for your reference.

Though gently put, the historical facts that disturb so many non-Muslims are still evident. It's interesting to note that many Muslims in the West see Muhammad as a kind of Jesus figure, which, as one of the comments on the video states, really does demonstrate who the ideal role model is doesn't it?

I recommend watching this as people very rarely act in genuinely stupid ways. In their own minds they nearly always have good reasons for their beliefs and actions. Here is a documentary that gives more time than usual in dealing with Muhammad's good points (and also some failings by past Christians).

Yet from my point of view - and from the point of view of many non-Muslims like me - though generous, the film does little to assuage our concerns. Sharia (the way of life for Muslims based on the Sunnah, the life and teachings of Muhammad) may not always have been applied as it was written and intended but nevertheless it remains authoritative. Revivals of religious fervor result in its stringent application. This is not good.

So there are several Muhammads: the peaceful, the wise, the administrator, ruler, the brigand, the assassin and the violent warlord. At all times feeling led by God to act in these ways and being the perfect example of a life pleasing to Allah. In Islamic theology this confusion in the variety of Muhammads was made sense of by giving precedence to the later teachings & practises of the man which were, unfortunately, overwhelmingly violent & supremacist.

Therein lies our problem.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
​Through the Lens of Muhammad's Life: How the Example and Teachings of Muhammad Shape Islam Today
For the vast majority of Muslims, the example and teachings of Muhammad are the final authority for Islamic beliefs, practices, and interpretation of the Qur'an.

This documentary traces the origin of modern Islamic doctrines and practices from the life of Muhammad himself. It also explains some of the apparent contradictions we find in Islam (e.g., between peace and the use of violence), and will enable viewers to better judge the legitimacy of assertions made by Muslims and Islamic groups who claim to represent “true Islam.”  

Topics covered (43 minutes):
1. Muhammad’s Authority [1:41]
2. From Peaceful Persuasion to Violent Extremism [5:31]
3. Magnanimity, Generosity, and Mercy [11:05]
4. Jihad (Holy War) for the Cause of Islam [15:37]
5. Jews, Christians, and Pagans Under Islam [20:25]
6. The Roots of Jewish Hatred [24:07]
7. Marriage and Women [30:51]
8. Slavery in Islam [36:32]
9. The Enigmatic Muhammad [39:14]

Some people? Some people?
What people might they be - apart from the FIANZ; malleable, uninformed, posturing, vote-hungry politicians; and certain violently prone leftist organisations here in New Zealand?

Would you believe a Muslim politician with very strong leftist leanings in the USA?
I bet you would. This is exactly the kind of person we might expect to want to "protect" us all from those "hate-filled, racist, bigoted" views that lead people towards "intolerance and violence". After all, we can't be allowed to think for ourselves now can we?

There's something very odd about that though - quite apart from the obvious totalitarianism, I mean.

Strangely for a man who deeply loves the Qur'an, he misses the "hate-filled, bigoted, violent and racist" teachings of that book which are all too obvious to the rest of us who read it. Why would that be I wonder? It is held up as the basis for every single jihad attack and war after all. According to the millions of perpetrators anyway, if they're to be believed.

And, for my excitable friends, before you go all paternalistic and overprotective on me for the sake of some - usually obliquely encountered if not entirely imaginary - "lovely misunderstood Muslims" who you seem to believe are not capable of constructing a coherent defence of their religion - have you read the Qur'an?

Might I gently suggest you should make that a priority before speaking about something you obviously know nothing about?

Just a few bucks spent on Trademe gives you the beginnings of an informed opinion.
Until you read it, what have you got to say?
​
This 8 minute clip provides a few handy snippets to whet your interest.
​
​
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
​Congressman Keith Ellison (a devout Muslim) recently sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, demanding that the company stop selling products that promote religious intolerance, violence, hatred, or racism. But since the Quran promotes religious intolerance, violence, etc., wouldn't this mean that Congressman Ellison is ordering Amazon to stop selling the Quran? David Wood discusses the issue.

Once 16% of our population becomes Muslim we will become an Islamic country at some point. Wow. Throughout history this has been the case in every country. With 1% of New Zealand's population being Islamic is it too far-fetched to think it'll happen here? I suppose all those other countries throughout history also thought that.

With just a tiny percentage of New Zealand's population being Muslim we have already had the spectacle of speakers considered "blasphemous" being denied use of Council buildings on "security grounds". You can read the petition here in which the Muslim sponsor indicates that blasphemy is the major reason Lauren Southern should be banned from New Zealand.

Take a moment to consider the appalling French, Swedish, German, Belgian, Dutch and British experiences of Islamic Sharia Courts, no-go zones, rape culture and so on. I keep asking this, but again: Why shouldn't this also be our experience if we keep mimicking the attitudes of the indigenous peoples of those countries? There's absolutely no reason that our future will be any different.

We should not forget Ayaan Hirsi Ali in this discussion either - both she & Lauren Southern have had to cancel over "security concerns." Neither person has ever advocated violence towards those who oppose them, while they themselves are faced with violence for their ideas. At the moment this violence primarily stems from what could reasonably be termed the overly paternalistic and patronising Far Left (what else would you call a group prepared to use violence to protect Muslims - a group they obviously think incapable of withstanding normal criticism?). 

All this is extremely odd.

Have a look at this video on how Victorian Police are charging Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux A$68,000 for doing their job during their recent speaking engagement. As the presenter notes, why is it only Conservative events that get attacked (and also billed)?

This is all way out of kilter.

>>>>>>>>>>>>
A note for the excitable:
Right about now some of you are thinking that this is shaping up to be a xenophobic screed attacking a culture the writer doesn't understand. As David Lange said in that famous debate "I can smell the uranium on your breath" friend.
Take another breath. Then take the time to watch the video and read some more posts here. We're all on the same side. I want Muslims to be able to practise their religion here - but not the political aspects and not to the detriment of everyone else practising their belief system.
<<<<<<<<<<<<

​Today I was asked to remove my crash helmet in Pak n Save; I wondered if the employee would ask a Muslim lady with a Niqab on to do the same thing. Well, that is an interesting question isn't it? Overseas experience indicates that another standard would be applied - all in the spirit of tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism of course. One law for everybody? What starts with us being sensitive ends with us receiving no sensitivity whatsoever. Banning speakers for blasphemy? In New Zealand in 2018? Really?

​And judging from the response of our thought leaders everyone is totally OK with this.

Below is a 6 minute discussion on the growth of Islam in the West and the crushing of Christians in what we might term, the old Islamic home countries. Should we be concerned if the percentage of Muslims - lovely, friendly, reasonable people that they are - gets to this percentage here? Only if we bother reading history, theology and a whole pile of contemporary news, surveys & studies.

Otherwise, nah. Only racists would think as much.

Transcript text courtesy the fabulous people over at Gates of Vienna.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nikoletta Incze on Lone Wolves: “The Behavior is Already Encoded in the Ideology”
Nikoletta Incze is a researcher for the Hungarian office of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. In the following appearance on Hungarian TV, Ms. Incze discusses the history of Islam, and especially the significance of Islamic law — which is the political side of Islam, comprising well over half of the text of the Islamic scriptures.

​Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

0:00 Year by year more and more people celebrate Ramadan here in Europe,
0:04 when the Mohammedans remember that Allah proclaimed
0:08 his will via the prophet Mohammed. 44 million Mohammedans live
0:12 in Europe and freely practice their religion. The question
0:16 is whether Christians can do the same in the Middle East?
0:20 Nikoletta Incze, from the Center for the Study of Political Islam.
0:24 Good morning. — I was thinking, 19 million Muslims… In Birmingham, we could see
0:28 There were [only] 140 thousand in the park,
0:32 and I was thinking, which Islamic country has that many Christians in it,
0:36 and whether they could do the same? —That is an interesting question. If we look at
0:40 the history of Islam, and look at the last 1,400 years,
0:44 because we’re talking about this religion from the 7th century, where
0:48 the prophet Mohammed was the central figure and Allah
0:52 gave proclamations to him through the Quran in the 7th century,
0:56 that was the basis of what we call Islam today.
1:00 By the way — right up until today they still refer the very same books
1:04 when one examines the everyday workings of Islam.
1:08 We can see, if we examine those areas where Islam became dominant, like Egypt,
1:12 Turkey or Syria, those countries were Christian before they were Islamic.
1:16 Not many people know: Pakistan was Hindu;
1:20 Afghanistan was Buddhist and Zoroastrian.
1:24 I usually refer to a Harvard study. I would like to say
1:28 a couple of additional words about it, because a lot of misunderstanding comes from it.
1:32 [Peter D.] Beaulieu was the person who used a mathematical formula
1:36 for this historical pattern, and examined
1:40 how these societies become saturated
1:44 by Muslims and the ideology of Islam,
1:48 and he came to the conclusion that these processes
1:52 usually take hundreds of years — some countries takes even 300-400 years --
1:56 but there is a specific point [of no return], which is usually around 16%.
2:00 If that large a proportion of the society becomes Muslim, the process becomes irreversible.
2:04 Then the rest of the change usually occurs over a period of 100-150 years, on average,
2:08 in these countries. So if we look at this principle --
2:12 we also studied this question, and see that
2:16 in history, the process of the spread of Islam
2:20 normally met with resistance, because in this ideology
2:24 conquest and dominance are encoded at an elementary level,
2:28 which is all about the supremacy of Islam. Now in Europe,
2:32 today, this process is happening very differently, because there is
2:36 NO RESISTANCE. In the name of tolerance and acceptance
2:40 Islam is treated as equal with other religions, and it is not recognized
2:44 that there are political aspects to Islam. —But how far can the equal treatment go?
2:48 Where is the limit? If I am a German citizen,
2:52 and steal an apple from the store, or God forbid something more valuable,
2:56 I could be punished severely. But when they use
3:00 Sharia law — which the authorities do not even know about, or if they know,
3:04 they do not care, because they do not know how to handle it --
3:08 what kind of equality could we talk about, or is it even possible to talk about such things?
3:12 It’s very interesting to look at what happens on the other side. For example,
3:16 in the 7th-9th centuries a pact emerged, which we call the Pact of Umar,
3:20 which was about the relationship between Christians and Muslims.
3:24 Christians, Jews and other religions, or as they are called, Dhimmis, the second-class citizens,
3:28 as they called them in Islamic societies.
3:32 These rules regulated their lives in the Islam society. And we can see
3:36 that what emerged as basic principles in the Pact became
3:40 the legal elements of Sharia law in later centuries.
3:44 We can see various parts of it: for example,
3:48 crosses cannot be left on the churches; they must be taken down.
3:52 It was forbidden to have an Easter procession,
3:56 or any other mass event. Church bells must be quiet or inaudible.
4:00 The lowest mosque in the city had
4:04 to be taller than the tallest church.
4:08 We can see that different clothing was required for
4:12 dhimmis. For example, the color yellow was first associated with the Jews;
4:16 they had to wear a belt to differentiate them from the Muslims.
4:20 Every regulation and law that was created under the Pact of Umar was
4:24 based on the fundamental principle, which was contained in
4:28 the Quran and Mohammed’s Sura and the Hadith,
4:32 that a Muslim is never the equal of an unbeliever.
4:36 And if we examine the process of Islamization, we must
4:40 understand that we should not imagine an organizational structure
4:44 like that found in Christianity with the Church, even inside the Islamic State,
4:48 which is not a good example of this [organizational structure], because the “lone wolf” perps
4:52 show clearly — despite the fact that ISIS accepts that the terrorist was “their soldier” --
4:56 that they never even had any contact with the Islamic State. Now the question emerges:
5:00 Why is it that isolated individuals are doing the same thing --
5:04 stating that they follow an Islamic call — without any organizing force
5:08 connecting them with an institutional structure? The answer is
5:12 that the behavior is already encoded in the ideology.
5:16 That system, that idea fuels the process
5:20 we call Islamization. That is what we see from everyday Muslims also;
5:24 they almost instinctively demand different clothing standards
5:28 — the burkini is one example of that issue, or the burka --
5:32 and many other things, which they insist are a religious
5:36 experience, but behind them there has always been a political issue,
5:40 leading to Islamization. — Thank you very much.
5:44 You’re welcome.

Below is a 6 minute interview with British MEP Janice Atkinson.


>>>>>>>>>>>>
​Jihad Watch's UK correspondent Joshua Winston interviews Janice Atkinson, a Member of the European Parliament from the UK. She discusses being a member of ENF (which includes Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders), having her mic shut off 3 times in the European Parliament for trying to talk about Tommy Robinson as being a political prisoner, about Islam being an evil ideology, and that we are in the middle of a jihad war with Islam that we will have to win. She also talks about bacon now having become a weapon in the UK, with people being jailed for dropping pieces near a mosque.

The "dreadful racist, white supremacist, bigot" Stefan Molyneux interviews "Bill Warmer" on the problems with Islam - mostly as they relate to non-Muslims. 

Again we get to hear an American Buddhist physicist discuss Islamic doctrine and sacred scriptures with an atheist student of philosophy. Lots of diversity here!

Are we brave enough to hear them out and then check their facts?

Topics covered include:~

• Islamic deception;
• warfare (Muhammad was involved in 100 acts of aggressive warfare in the last 9 years of his life);
• the attitude to the non-Muslims according to Islamic sources;
• the meaning of the four varieties of jihad;
• the misguided "war on terror";
• the numbers of lives lost under 1300 years of Islamic expansion (that would be c. 270 million);
• and Islam has never made a mistake because Islam itself is the perfect religion - there is a huge lack of reflection within the Muslim community (Turkey still will not admit the crimes against the Armenians);
• the affect of Saudi money on America (look closely, this might apply here too) producing what we call "radicalism". I recall a missionary acquaintance working in one of the Central Asian "stans" who recently told me how every little village of 20 houses now had a large Mosque built in the middle of it. Where did the money for that come from? The Saudis. Then there was something of a rebellion in the land and, once again, every second man in the cities seemed to be holding a Kalashnikov. Where did the money come from for that? Same place.);
• Is it wrong to say that Western civilisation is better? Is that racist?;
• the history of African slavery and its Islamic and Jewish facets;
• "Hate facts";
• the migrant crisis and the differing ways East &Western Europe are approaching the issue (the East, Dr Warner says has experienced Communism and they see Islam as Communism with a god. There is also far greater interest among the young there. Some very interesting insights here);
• Islam is not a race (amazing this needs to be said);
• Is it really immoral to criticise Islam? Which Muslim should we take as representative of Islam and why?;
• Some pivotal differences in the intellectual approaches of Islam and Christianity;
• the subjugation of non-Muslims - the humiliation of the dhimma;
• what on earth is the problem with so many Western feminists concerning Islam's treatment of women? The proportions in Islamic scripture describing the equality, superiority and inferiority of women to men; 
• Muhammad's differing attitudes to polygamy when his own daughter was involved;
• we cannot "compromise our way to victory" we must make clear statements and treat all religions equally in that they are open to study and criticism;
• we mustn't be afraid to examine Islam and hold it to account.
  

Just under an hour.

​
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Political Islam | Bill Warner and Stefan Molyneux
​Many religions have accepted the separation of church and state, but others like Islam, contain political elements in addition to religious teachings.

​Dr. Bill Warner is the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. He has produced a dozen books and the first self-study course on Political Islam. For more from Dr. Warner, please go to: https://www.politicalislam.com

A Muslim from the UAE criticises Islamic oppression, Sharia & racism for TWO WHOLE MINUTES!!

Obvious question: How did the British government allow this radical to enter the country? Why aren't people being protected from hearing this hate-filled bigot?


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UK Muslim: Western society superior to Sharia
Jihad Watch UK correspondent Joshua Winston interviews a Muslim who grew up in the UAE and who has been to Mecca, etc. He discusses the status of women under Sharia, the activities of the Islamic police, and more.

UPDATE: I see the link no longer works. Try this one.
--------------

Haters gotta hate eh?
Or perhaps these are people who may have been misunderstood and could use a moment to clear things up?

I'm so glad these two are still coming here and I'd love the chance to hear them. I'm sure the recent controversy will pique the interest of many who had never heard of them. I still find it fascinating that their positions and arguments are so poorly understood that they can be called "provocateurs" just for presenting ideas that are outside mainstream thought. A bit like that provocateur Copernicus deliberately creating tension by stating the Sun and not the Earth was the centre of our cosmos eh? Somebody shut the guy down! Shocking human being.

Either that or - crazy thought - we could take the time to understand what was really being suggested and see if it had any merit. Might be worth a shot...?

Below we have a pretty informed and largely impartial interview to watch. We know it's largely impartial because the interviewer actually gives the pair time to complete their thoughts before trying to snare them in their half-completed explanation. This is so wildly unusual these days that we must immediately deeply suspect the interviewer himself is some sort of far-right oddball - and indeed there are some would would argue this. However he doesn't shy away from the more difficult topics so he seems pretty fair to me. 

The Victorian Police are charging them to provide what Victorians must surely consider a normal service already funded by their taxes. That sounds a little odd to me. Why wouldn't the Police rather protect the freedom of assembly for people? Who decides what will and will not be charged for? Doesn't charging people to speak militate against freedom and discourage others to speak? They discuss this peculiarity.

Importantly for us, they also deal with Islam and are both well informed on the problems. They also discuss the European migrant crisis; is Allah a "gay god"?; race& IQ; the unfolding disaster in South Africa; the need for the free exchange of ideas; and security concerns for their speaking tour.

I think it's a very useful chat.
What do you think?
​20 minutes.

Gad Saad has Robert Spencer on to discuss Jihad and his new book on its history from Muhammad to ISIS.

Topics covered include:~

• The extremely bloody invasion of Hindu India by the early Muslims and why it occurred;
• The aspect of Jihad in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict;
• The perennial threat Islam represents to a West that has lost its will to live;
• The c. 300 million deaths worldwide arising from Jihad over 1300+ years;
• The myth of the Golden Age of Islam in Spain;
• The deceitfulness of the idea that Islam is inherently tolerant and accepting;
• How it is that Westerners no longer recognise the supremacist nature & dangers of Islam?
• What part does an incompetent or corrupt academia play?;
• The various varieties of Jihad - not just warfare;
• Hijrah and no-go zones - the Islamic migration issue;
• How to prevent future civil wars in the West and peacefully defeat the ideological enemy;
• Can Islam be reformed & become peaceful?;
• What is the likelihood of a large number of Muslims embracing critical thinking and understanding Islam differently? And why can't Islam's spokesmen adequately defend intellectual criticism of the Faith?;
• A personal story of a Persian Muslim leaving Islam under the Ayatollahs that reflects the contrast between what we see as inherent personal rights and totalitarian conformity;
• How might Islam suffer under Western laws? Could Sharia ever be declared seditious?

Sixty-five minutes of historical analysis of Jihad and our contemporary difficulties.


>>>>>>>>>>
My Latest Chat with Robert Spencer (THE SAAD TRUTH_707)
We discuss his latest book The History of Jihad.

Do you remember the Moonies?

I remember back in the '70's seeing a New Zealand TV interviewer talk to an American lawyer for the group about why the parents of a young woman had been cut off from their child by the group.

It was quite a spectacle: the interviewer was trying to get some answers about why this was taking place. How dare they control & manipulate someone in this way? The lawyer, on the other hand was pleading religious persecution of an innocent minority faith - the Moonies were the real victims, not the virtually kidnapped and brainwashed girl and not the grieving family. The Mooonies were just exercising their religious freedom - why was everyone so against this, the lawyer asked?

I remember the utter disbelief of that journalist and of my family as we watched the exchange. No matter what, there was no recourse to reason and certainly no admission of guilt. It was obvious & blatant outright lying and everyone knew it.

I've often thought of that interaction when I see contemporary interactions with many Muslims when it comes to the damage inflicted on women by Islam. Are all Muslims abusive? Well of course not, that is not the suggestion. The obvious implication though from all the rape crimes, no-go zones and Sharia courts throughout Europe however, is that there is something at least as worrying about Islam as there is about the Moonies.

Oscar Kightley is a nice bloke, very warm and good-natured, so when he wrote a piece for Stuff about Lauren Southern & Stefan Molyneux not coming to New Zealand I took the time to read it. Like a lot of others, he'd never heard of the pair. Yet he seems to have made up his mind about them from a couple of hours exploring their Youtube channels. He didn't find it a worthwhile experience.

But perhaps he went in expecting to find yucky stuff and so found what he expected eh? This seems to happen a  lot in my experience.

I say this as he seems a generous & level-headed fella, yet for him to view a video of say, Lauren Southern asking some women on a "women's march" whether they preferred Islam or Feminism and only come away with the impression that she was being deliberately provocative while remaining impervious to the women's measured responses is to miss the whole point (I took a stab that this is one of the videos that he watched, it's one of her most popular and it's short - pretty likely he saw it).

​The point here is that she presented women with questions about Islam's mandated treatment of women. She also offered scriptural explanations from Islamic sacred texts backing up the subservient status of women, Muhammad's child bride Aisha and the right of a Muslim man to beat his wife.

BTW here are the two scriptures she referred to:~
Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64 Narrated Aisha: that the prophet married her when she was SIX YEARS OLD AND CONSUMMATED HIS MARRIAGE WHEN SHE WAS NINE YEARS OLD and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).
and
Sahih Muslim 4:2127 MUHAMMAD STRUCK HIS FAVOURITE WIFE, AISHA, IN THE CHEST one evening when she left the house without his permission. Aisha narrates, "He struck me on the chest which caused me pain."

Once again, this is not merely uninformed accusation. These are Sahih ahadith and as such are considered totally reliable and second only to the Qur'an in authority. I may as well add in a verse from the Qur'an itself, Q 4:34:
            "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great".

Mr Kightley doesn't seem to take the Islamic Faith seriously however. Neither did the young Muslim woman Ms Southern spoke with - in fact she was indignant at being told such abhorrent things were in Islam. Yet there they are, so the question "feminism or Islam" seems entirely appropriate. How could someone like Mr Kightley so easily dismiss it? The scriptures were written on screen for study. It's quite easy to google them.

So, back to the need for ladies to have a really good look under the hood before they make a permanent arrangement with a Muslim man. The video below is of a mother who had her daughter murdered by her Muslim husband in Melbourne. She hadn't seen her daughter for 5 years before she was killed (sounds like the old Moonies story eh?). In the end though, she was killed slowly, over a period of days while her two small kids looked on.

The Moonies didn't have a Book that advocated this kind of dreadful abusive attitude 40 years ago. Yet 40 years ago every single person watching that interview knew exactly who was right, who was wrong and who was lying. Nobody was the least bit confused. If that young woman had been murdered nobody would have swallowed any "cultural differences" argument to ameliorate the man's actions. Today however, Islam has Books directing the treatment of wives but people seem too embarrassed simply to pay attention to how these cases align with those Books. And even if they do pay attention, there are prominent voices that turn around and tell them that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Islamic Faith and that there are abusers in every religion. So we take their word for it & stop looking into the matter.

But as our scriptural references show, this has everything to do with Islam. Once again I ask - and I chose Christianity because it's the religion most of us know best - can somebody point me to a passage in the teachings of Christ or in the teachings of the Apostles or of the Church Fathers, such as the Didache, that provide a favourable example of paedophilia and wife beating?

Friends, there aren't any.

Some men abuse their wives despite their religious background and others do so because of it. Those Islamic scriptures formed their culture just as Christianity formed ours.

And what about the girls and the women? We're all feminists until it comes to Islam it seems.

By the way: Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux look to be going ahead now with their Auckland visit. If I was in the vicinity I would make a point of going to hear them - properly I mean.

The issues are serious enough to warrant that, I would have thought.