Muslims and Dhimmis in Britain

The Economist –back in May—offered some strange musings on the fate of Britain’s Muslims:
“The unhappiness of British Muslims is easy enough to explain: their living standards tend to be low and relatively few of the women work.” (source)
Hmmm… these two demographic data are presented in juxtaposition as if they were simply two external negative influences from which Muslim households tend to suffer. Could it be that one leads to the other? Could it be that households who, on average, have fewer second earners also tend to have lower household incomes?
Where the low female labour market participation is driven by religiously conservative lifestyle choices I struggle to see how this unhappiness should be seen as anything

Political correctness doesn’t go mad, it is mad

To realise how intellectually inconsistent PC politicians really are, consider this from Hazel Blairs:
„Although warning that people should not set out to “deliberately offend people” or make racist jokes, she believes that there should be more scope for people to express themselves.
“What I don’t want to see happen is because people are frightened of an over-reaction they don’t raise the issue,” she said. “What I don’t want people to say is that Muslims will be offended by Christmas, because they are not. There is this presumption that we don’t do things because people will be offended.““ (Source)
So she doesn’t want people to offend but then doesn’t want the fall-out which a consistent and forced avoidance of offence necessarily entails.

Middle Eastern Wisdom and a Debate on Islam

According to Ayatolah Khomeini: „The sweat of a camel that eats unclean substances is unclean.“ For more Islamic wisdom, see here.

On a somewhat related note, Robert Spencer has posted the first part of a debate with Daniel Peterson on the subject “Islam threat or not?” The first part looks interesting and, unlike some in the comments section, I am not yet ready to conclude that Peterson is an idoit [sic].

Low Intensity Terrorism

The cold war saw the term ‘low intensity warfare’ as a euphemism for the dirty wars in Latin America and beyond. Today’s jihadists have their own equivalent in low intensity terrorism: low profile attacks which are not normally widely reported and frighten their less fanatical co-religionists into submission. One recent example of this comes from Afghanistan:

“One 16-year-old victim, who

Dutch Blasphemy Laws

It seems that the UK is not the only European Country aiming to strengthen religious censorship: Dutch censorship laws appear surprisingly hard to defeat. The numerous existing censorship provisions existing elsewhere in the west have been discussed here before. Canada is a particularly bad case (see Ezra Levant’s blog for almost daily updates!)

The Jewel of Medina – much ado about nothing

Sherry Jones’ novel The Jewel of Medina has attracted plenty of attention prior to publication, mainly due to the self censorship of the original publisher and an actual fire bomb attack on its successor. (The Pub Philosopher has chronicled these events.) Generally speaking, if somebody tries to censor a book, I normally want to read it; but in this case, I need not have bothered.

Denise Spellberg argued the book was soft core pornography

Religious Discrimination as a Political Weapon?

Once upon a time, not discriminating against somebody meant not judging an individual adversely by irrelevant criteria such as race or religion. It used to mean allowing freedom of conscience; judging people by their ability or the contents of their character, not the colour of their skin. We have of course long reached the point where non-discrimination is taken to mean making arrangements or granting special favours to members of designated interest groups.

This shift has recently been illustrated by the case

Petition Against Sharia Courts in the UK

Back in September, there were reports about Sharia courts issuing binding verdicts in the UK. There is now a petition on the government’s web site to stop the operation of these ‘courts’. The petition is set to run until the 1 January 2009.

Mark Thompson, Islam and the BBC

The BBC’s Mark Thompson, according to the telegraph, argued in a lecture to Theos that Muslims should be treated more sensitively than Christians because they “… are a religious minority in Britain and also often from ethnic minorities…”.

These comments, of course were promptly played down by the BBC: “A BBC spokesman said Mr Thompson did not mean Islam should be given preferential treatment, just that all religions are different. He said: “People should look at his actual comments rather than trying to infer additional meaning that isn’t there.” (Source)

Looking at his actual comments is not so easy

Undercover Mosque: The Return

‘UnderCover Mosque: The Return’ is up on Youtube here.